Pike School of Art – Mississippi is excited to launch McComb Made.
McComb Made will be a workforce development program for under-resourced members of our community. It pairs local, professional artists and artisans — woodworkers, potters, painters, musicians, tailors — with a newly created workforce, a strong workforce that we invite the community to be a part of.
This initiative has a dual mission: to create beautiful utilitarian objects and to train our workers to pursue careers in the creative economy. McComb Made objects, produced through a collaborative process, are sold under the McComb Made brand, with proceeds supporting the mission to promote an artist-led community renaissance.
Here at McComb Made, we understand that we need a strong local workforce to help improve the conditions of this rural community. The Merriam-Webster definition of a workforce is “the workers engaged in a specific activity or enterprise.” Our local community has various strong workforces, among them, the healthcare industry (Southwest Mississippi Medical Center, multiple home healthcare providers, retirement communities, etc.), our educational systems (local school districts, Southwest Mississippi Community College, etc.), and classic manufacturing and processing industries (Georgia-Pacific and Weyerhaeuser, Sanderson Farms, etc.).
We at McComb Made also know, through our connection with local arts & civic organizations, that we have a vast pool of creative people in McComb. Artisans who make functional objects, artists who make expressive art. Essentially, workers who make fine and exquisite products. McComb Made, on a philosophical level, aims to be a collective of members of the local creative economy with one overarching goal — to keep resources as local as possible for the benefit of, what we consider, a largely untapped workforce.
We look forward our launch with a variety of beautifully designed and produced objects. We hope you find it important to support our efforts.
