Events: UPS Second Sunday (February)

smARTbox distribution*
12–4:30 p.m.
Taylor Lobby, Wieland Pavilion

*While supplies last

Please Note: Due to high volume on UPS Second Sundays, access to special exhibitions is not guaranteed.

Berea College is one of the country’s most distinctive higher educational institutions. In fact, it is a College like no other. Berea was founded by ardent abolitionists and radical reformers in 1855 expressly to offer a high-quality education to women and men, Black and white students living and learning together six years before the Civil War. Berea’s founders exercised a vision grounded in equality and also audacity. After restoring the College after the Civil War, Berea leaders realized that charging the Black and white students it was serving was futile, so the College stopped charging tuition in 1892 and began a program where all students worked and learned on campus to sustain Berea’s mission. No student has since been charged tuition.

Berea College has supported the creation and distribution of craft since 1893. Throughout the past 130 years, many different trades have been practiced by students, including needlework, printing, ironwork, and the creation of delicately hand-painted tea sugars. Today’s craft areas include Woodcraft, Weaving, Broomcraft, Ceramics, as well as a Craft Education and Outreach program (CEOP). In these five different areas, nearly 100 Berea College students work and learn in Student Craft, no matter their academic major.

Since 2018 Berea has focused on infusing students’ voice in the program as a way of supporting the understanding of and deepening the connection to the College’s Great Commitments. By consciously embracing design as an essential component of craft, students today enjoy working that nurtures the head, the heart and the hand. Almost three-quarters of the items in our current catalog have been designed by, or with, direct input from students.