The Product Design Award, presented by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, recognizes forward-thinking design of objects, products, and materials.
Student Craft provides 100 of Berea’s roughly 1,600 students an experiential education focused on design and making in addition to their chosen course of academic study. For most of our Craft students, this is their first exposure to life as a craftsperson and to design.
Each Craft student, demonstrating unlimited academic potential and limited economic resources, attends Berea College tuition free. Each receives the same design brief, encouraging students to submit any design idea that would enhance or expand knowledge of Berea’s eight Great Commitments. This conceptual design challenge requires critical thinking, problem solving, and communication skills that will serve students no matter their academic major or career aspiration. In addition to design, Craft students must navigate engineering challenges, explore market viability, prototype, and then produce a volume of this work. Using this curriculum, our program designs, produces, and sells 4,000-5,000 objects annually.
By democratizing access to design, and then providing both support and a platform, we in Student Craft aspire to inclusively represent the population of our campus, Kentucky, Appalachia and beyond. Every student has lived their own unique life and has a singular voice that deserves to be heard. For too long, the craft and design traditions of Appalachia have focused too narrowly on the contributions of western European settlers to the region, missing the opportunity to celebrate the full breadth of a place so often misunderstood. Design provides a path for our students to share a bit of themselves and the core beliefs of our institution with the world at large.
While most of our students will pursue professional careers outside the world of design when they leave Berea College, their design education and experience with Student Craft helps our students understand their own creative potential and appreciate that potential and ability in others.
While craft making may not help them make a living, it certainly can help them make a life beyond Berea.
Berea College is the first educational institution to have won a National Design Award in the Product Design Category.
