Experimental Design Making a Difference in Bertie, NC

Why would you study design if you weren’t planning on becoming a designer? Well, if you were one of the 16 high school students in 11^th grade at the School of Agriscience and Biotechnology at Bertie Early College High School it might be your best chance to make a difference in the impoverished rural area of North Carolina.

Bertie County is one of the poorest counties in the U.S., where 80 percent of students live in poverty, and your best chance of employment will be a low-skilled job in agriculture or biotechnology.

The 16 teenagers in grade 11 have committed to attending an experimental design course called Studio H (which stands for Humanity, Habitats, Health and Happiness) for three hours every day this coming school year. The once abandoned car body shop behind the school has been converted into a classroom, studio and workshop to house Studio H and it’s students. During the school year the students will be tasked with designing a community farmers’ market to sell locally gown produce.

Emily Pilloton, the founder of Studio H, recently moved to Bertie County from San Franciso—along with project architect, Matthew Miller—with the hopes that social and humanitarian design initiatives will in some way help the people living here. If Studio H is successful in Bertie County, Pilloton and Miller plan to introduce it to other poor rural schools.

Because of Bertie County’s poverty, “very few of these kids will become designers,” says Pilloton, “Lots of people in poor rural communities like this have no idea what design means…but we’ll be teaching the students design thinking, leadership skills, shop skills and citizenship. Hopefully they’ll think of design as a different way of thinking, seeing and tackling problems. If they go on to work in, say, agriculture, it’s a great way of understanding why they might plant in a different way.”

Read the full New York Times article about design thinking in Bertie County.