Community Design With A Side of Pie

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.

1 minute read

June 20, 2009, 5:00 AM PDT

By Tim Halbur

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

Friday, June 19, 2009 in Fast Company

Architecture Alabama Design Greensboro

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