Fall Field Trip: From Greensboro to Tuscaloosa
October 26-27, 2014
For the Curb Scholars’ fall field trip, we drove down to Greensboro, Alabama, home of HERO Housing, PieLab, and HERObike (see more about Greensboro and HERO here). Curb Scholars visited with the Fellows of Project Horseshoe Farms, who reminded us that working with communities requires time and trust, and that our aim is to support, not supplant, what’s already there.
After exploring the town’s North Ward area where many of the Rural Studio’s $20K houses are located, we also visited the Rural Studio campus of Auburn University, just down the road in Newbern, AL. We saw their current projects and checked out the student-designed and -built “pods” that they live in.
Then we headed for Tuscaloosa, where Curb Scholars met with University of Alabama’s Creative Campus interns and checked out the amazing UA Makerspace used by engineers and artists alike. We were all inspired by the work coming out of U of A’s Creative Campus—a film festival, an online collection of geotagged stories about the stunning campus—as well as by the collaborations among of art and engineering students leading to [Enter]Connect, an exhibit of art works created with emerging technologies.
Special thanks to the students and fellows at Rural Studios and Horseshoe Farms, as well as everyone at the University of Alabama, for sharing your expertise and time with the Scholars!
