Project Overview

In the fall project for the 2015-2016 school year, high school students painstakingly designed, carved, and finished individual spoons or eating utensils that represented their family or personal identity. Using chisels, rasps, files, and fine sanding tools, students started with a rough block of wood (of many sorts!) and worked for weeks to pare down their design into a beautiful and personal object.

Studio H is an in-school design/build class for 6th-12th-grade students. First launched in Bertie County, NC and now based at Realm Charter School in Berkeley, CA, Studio H students apply their core subject learning to design and build audacious and socially transformative projects. Students of Studio H have previously dreamed up, designed, and constructed a 2000-square-foot farmers market pavilion, their own school library, a pop-up park, laser-etched skateboards, sculptural concrete public furniture, roadside farm stands, tiny homes, and more. Through experimentation, non-stop production, tinkering, and a lot of dirt under their fingernails, students develop the creative capital, critical thinking, and citizenship necessary for their own success and for the future of their communities.The work of Studio H is the subject of the full-length documentary If You Build It.

Project H uses the power of creativity, design, and hands-on building to amplify the raw brilliance of youth, transform communities, and improve K-12 public education from within. Programs teach rigorous design iteration, tinkering, applied arts and sciences, and vocational building skills to give young people the creative, technical, and leadership tools necessary to make positive, long-lasting change in their lives and their communities.