At PieLab in Greensboro, Alabama, locals mingle with designers attempting to do use design to do good, with a slice of pie on the side.
The space is used as a headquarters for Project M- a small group of creatives are selected every year as part of the project team to travel to different locations, identify a problem, and solve it.
"On May 1 of this year, Brian Jones was among the group of four designers who arrived in Alabama after attending an M Blitz in Maine during the month of March that launched a movement called Free Pie. "Free Pie was designed to gather people together with pie in an effort to promote conversations with neighbors and strangers, and to bring humanity back into downtown areas," he says. "We used real plates and utensils from a thrift store to reduce waste and to encourage everyone to hang around and talk." It created such a successful, instant community for the small town, they decided to continue the experiment in Alabama, where a new group of designers would be arriving in June for a month-long session."
FULL STORY: PieLab in Rural Alabama Serves Up Community, Understanding, and, Yes, Pie
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UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
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HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research