When we spoke to John Beilenberg, founder of Project M, before he left for Alabama he said he wasn’t sure what this year’s Project M south would be like. He told us to come down and see for ourselves. And, since we’ve recently undertaken the task of creating a documentary about designing for social change, we decided we should do just that.
John was heading to a piece of Alabama called Hale County – currently the second poorest county in the United States (more on that distinction later). This summer was his third in the small town of Greensboro. For the last three years he has spent a month in this small town of just under 3,000 with a group of young designers from all over the country. His primary goal – to teach them to think wrong. In fact, we heard on numerous occasions that the process he goes through with these young designers makes them unemployable. Or, more precisely, that they leave Project M with the desire to not work within the traditional design industry. What, exactly, does that mean? We needed to find out; to experience John and his Project M’ers (as they call themselves); to experience Greensboro, Alabama.
So we packed our filming goodies and went south to find out for ourselves.
