[bells ringing]
- When Eudorah Moore did the exhibition,
she borrowed 42 objects from the Appalachian Museum
at Berea College.
Objects are, in a sense, almost like a recording.
They've recorded the motions and the thoughts of the maker.
The Appalachian Museum closed in 1998.
Now we primarily use the collection
for artifact encounters,
where students think about Appalachian life
based on what they find in the object.
- Berea College was founded in 1855
by the Reverend John G. Fee, who was an ardent abolitionist
and founded Berea to provide education for freed slaves.
He wanted to create an education environment
where Blacks and whites could be educated together.
- Linda Strong-Leek: But because of the state's Day Law,
we were segregated in 1910 for the first time.
Desegregated in 1950, but it was a very slow desegregation.
Now 40% of our students are students of color.
Berea's history has always been about inclusion,
and lifting up democracy,
and lifting up the promises of America.
- Aaron: Berea College provides a tuition-free education
for all its students.
What we refer to here on campus
as the Tuition Promise Scholarship.
So every student who comes to Berea
comes here tuition-free.
They also have the opportunity to work in our Labor Program,
making craft, which is then sold
to bring in revenue to the college.
- At one point in time,
there were 10, 12 full-time furniture makers
out on the shop floor.
Maybe 40 or 50 students worked within the industries here.
They made a large amount of furniture.
And the furniture was shipped around the country.
The shop has transitioned
to making smaller items, craft items.
And the reason for that shift was to allowing the students
to make more of the work themselves.
- Aaron: This program has been around for 127 years.
We also have some real historic products
that are still in our catalog.
That's great, but it can also lead you
to rest on your laurels a little bit.
I've been involved in conversations
about how we could move the student craft program forward
in a way that would resonate more soundly with students.
- Stephen Burks: When I received an email,
I'd never even heard of Berea College.
But I discovered that Berea was the first college
in the South to be integrated.
So I was kind of blown away by the history.
And I immediately wanted to kind of throw myself
into the project.
I grew up on the south side of Chicago.
We weren't well-off by any means.
My mom always told me that
I could be anything I wanted in the world.
And that just kind of propelled me.
- Aaron: Stephen is the perfect person for this,
because of how he thinks about design ideas in a global way.
- I like to say that design is a Western concept.
What I realized traveling around the world,
people have been making things for generations,
and it's so tied to their communities, their societies,
their ways of living.
And design has always been expressed through the ages
by what we make with our hands.
And so the Berea Project
we called Crafting Diversity was born.
I'm here to explore new ideas.
I started to think about
how we could engage the students in the creative process.
- I mean, it's the same as that one, like...
- Stephen: So that they could be making something
that then they could imagine
being part of their everyday lives.
What this was about for me is to use the hand
as a kind of signature, right?
So everyone's got different fingerprints.
- When Stephen first came,
we'd been in a craft program for 127 years.
We had never had a person of color in a leadership position.
- They're a little too polka dotty for your taste, though.
- Aaron: So for our students to be able to see someone
who looks like them, succeeding at the highest level,
is really important.
- My name is Joseph Opaleye.
I'm originally from Lagos, Nigeria,
but I live with my family in Queens, New York.
I'm a technology and applied design major.
And I've always worked with wood.
This design, it's a prototype.
So it's something new.
I'm still learning more about it,
working with Mr. Stephen.
Our goal for the design is to make it well-known nationwide.
- The Berea basket, of course,
this is the classic of Berea College,
was a bit of an inspiration for our new basket.
What I was trying to achieve is to take that structure,
that repetitive structure,
and think about it as almost a small industrial part
that the students could learn.
We can make different sizes, different shapes.
You know, we can...
- In different colors. - Different colors, right?
The basket for me is a kind of structural model.
It's architecture at a very small scale.
- Uh, I think I like the color,
but I would prefer like, three colors.
- It's missing a little bit
of restraint, right? - Right.
- But I think having the possibilities
is what I really like about the project.
- My name is Em Croft.
I am a senior from Carrboro, North Carolina.
I've designed this baby blanket.
And it's inspired by water,
the grays and the blues together reminded me of, you know,
a mountain stream.
Being a member of the LGBTQ community,
it's really, really exciting for me
to be able to be in a space at Berea
where that identity is not only accepted but supported.
And that I get to express that
through the creation of this blanket.
Just a dream come true for me, having a design that I made,
not just people liked it, but people want to buy it.
People want me to put it out into the world.
It's the direction we're trying to move the studio in,
a commitment to diversity and inclusivity.
[calm music]
- Because it's kind of a forgotten craft,
broomcraft hasn't changed much.
I made a broom when I was 14 years old.
Still got it hanging on the wall of my original shop.
I always tell my students,
they should keep the first one they make
to do the very same reason.
- My name's Mary Beth Mullen.
I'm a political science major with a history minor.
I decided to work in broomcraft at Berea College
'cause I wanted to do something with my hands
because I've always loved making crafts.
When I say that I work at broomcraft,
they think of like the plastic brooms
that you get at the store.
And it's just really interesting
to be able to create something beautiful
out of just a household item.
One of my favorite brooms to make,
because I can do it all by myself, is a whisk broom.
You have to hold the strings so tight.
But I love all the small pieces that go into it
that make it just so different.
A lot of it's feel and just practice, practice, practice.
- The idea that there's a place in a culture
still making brooms, [laughs] that kind of blew me away.
And now we're working on a new concept,
which we're lovingly calling Broom Thing.
- Christopher: So Stephen came in,
and of course he's a big city designer.
No offense to him,
we do the different colors and everything,
but it's kind of the same stuff we've done for 80 to 100 years.
- Is this enough? Can we... - Yeah, we can fluff that.
Let's fluff it.
And Stephen wants to push the limits
and see how far the medium can take us.
- So you know, Broom Thing came out of this concept of,
is that a lot of people buy these brooms
as decorative objects.
- Yeah, but they also liked the functionality too.
- Right.
I guess I've always been attracted
to natural materials,
materials that have an inherent warmth
and that are malleable.
And so broomcorn is a really good example.
- Christopher: Broomcorn is a plant.
It's about 15-foot tall.
There's about 50 plants to one kitchen broom.
- Stephen: What do you call this machine?
- This is a broom winder.
This one, this particular one is made
by the Baltimore Broom Company, in probably the '70s.
They long went out of business.
- So that's the broom handle stuck in there.
- Broom handle's stuck in there, the wire's attached.
And then it's holding tension as I feed it on here.
Under the tension of the wire, it makes it poof out.
- Right.
- What I like to do is give it a final spin
to get our maximum poofage.
Patented word, poofage.
[Stephen laughs] - That's beautiful.
Stepping into Berea College,
there's just such a wealth of knowledge and tradition
to build upon that it was very easy for me
to find inspiration.
It's amazing. [laughing]
So we have 26 of these, is that right, Chris?
- 26. - 26 of these to make a sphere.
And this is pretty close to my original sketch.
- Close. - Yeah, yeah.
I always wanted something
to kind of move us away from the perception
of this as brooms.
- Yeah, I've done some wild stuff,
but this is definitely... [both laughing]
Wilder. - Yeah.
Lower, beat, back, up.
- Woman: I mean, it's a gentle process.
Whoops! [both laughing]
That's the opposite of gentle.
- Yeah, it's true, it's true.
- Aaron: Stephen has brought us the idea
that we can be better,
and that our students are capable of creating objects
that are the finest craft,
and everyone who works here and the students who attend,
their voice is gonna be heard.
Their voice matters in the world.
[uplifting music]