Overview
Studio H is a high school design/build curriculum for rural community benefit. The one-year program is offered to Junior-year students of the Bertie County school district in North Carolina, providing college credit, a summer job, and a hands-on opportunity to build real-world projects for the community (in this, our first year, we’ll build chicken coops and a farmer’s market in downtown Windsor!). By learning through a design sensibility and “dirt-under-your-fingernails” construction skills, we’re developing creativity, critical thinking, citizenship, and capital to give students the skills they need to succeed, while building the assets the community needs to survive. Given the opportunity to engage within a public education system, we believe the next generation will be the greatest asset and untapped resource in rural communities’ futures.

For specifics about Studio H’s curriculum and pedagogy, please visit the Curriculum page.

About Project H Design
Studio H is the core educational initiative of Project H Design, a nonprofit design organization that connects the power of design to the people who need it most, and the places where it can make a real and lasting difference. Project H Design was founded in January 2008 by Emily Pilloton and Matthew Miller. Our five-tenet design process (There is no design without (critical) action; We design WITH, not FOR; We document, share and measure; We start locally and scale globally, We design systems, not stuff) results in simple and effective design solutions for those without access to creative capital. Project H has been working in Bertie County, North Carolina, since February 2009, and is currently based there. Previous work in Bertie County has included the construction of four Learning Landscape educational playgrounds, three innovative computer lab spaces (above), a weight room for the high school football team, and a graphic campaign for free broadband internet access for school district families. Learn more about Project H Design here.

Instructors
Emily Pilloton and Matthew Miller are the founder/executive director and project architect, respectively, of Project H Design. Both are adjunct faculty at Pitt Community College. Matthew holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Tennessee and a Master of Architecture from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has designed and built houses and schools in Detroit and Uganda, and has taught architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design, University of California Berkeley, and more. He is an accomplished welder and fabricator, with a MacGyver-like ability to build anything out of anything. Emily holds a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from the University of California Berkeley and a Master of Product Design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has taught at the School of the Art Institute, published a book called Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People, appeared on the Colbert Report to talk about humanitarian design, and lectures worldwide, including presentations at the TED Global conference and others.

About Bertie County
Bertie County is the poorest county in North Carolina. It is very rural, swampy, and sparsely populated with just 27 people per square mile and a total population of about 20,000. The county seat of Windsor is home to just over 2000 people. The county’s main economy is agriculture, its main crops tobacco, cotton, peanuts, and some corn and soy. Its biggest employers are the Perdue chicken processing plant, and the school district. One in three children in Bertie County live in poverty and 95% of all public school students receive a free or reduced-rate lunch. The county is 65% African-American, though its public school is made up of 86% African American students. In 2007, just 27% of 3rd-8th grade students were passing the state standard for both English and math, though those numbers are beginning to increase.



Our Funders
Studio H is made possible with generous support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Adobe Foundation. We are enormously grateful to have funders with mission statements in line with our beliefs and programming, focusing on strengthening communities and providing the tools for collective empowerment. We are also greatly appreciative of all our many individual donors who support Studio H, from our relatives and high school friends to colleagues within the design community. To make a tax-deductible donation to Project H to support this year’s Studio H initiatives, please visit our Donate page.