Designers, furniture manufacturers and community team up for teachers

HIGH POINT — Cheerleaders kicked off the festivities at a design project reveal recently when The Design Besties and High Point by Design unveiled a new teacher’s lounge at T. Wingate Andrews High School.

Whitney Atkinson, The Design Besties, left; Jane Dagmi, High Point by Design; Darell Baker, T. Wingate Andrews High School; Nikki Watson, Lori Johnson, Rhobin Dela Cruz

Against a backdrop of lockers, classrooms and fluttering pompoms, principal Darell Baker welcomed the assembled guests of educators, designers and press and thanked The Design Besties — Nikki Watson, Rhobin Dela Cruz, Lori Johnson, and Whitney Atkinson — the four designers who developed the plan for the tea and brought the vision to reality in collaboration with Jane Dagmi, managing director of High Point by Design.

The reimagined Teachers Lounge features dozens of in-kind product donations.

“Today is more than an unveiling of a space,” Baker said. “It is a celebration of appreciation, partnership and the power of community.”

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The Design Besties, founded approximately 18 months ago, is a nonprofit collective of designers with a mission of driving change through events, education and impact projects. The latest initiative gifts professionally designed teachers’ lounges to schools in need with a goal of “reimagining educators’ spaces into restorative sanctuaries of care and comfort.”

A group of teachers at T. Wingate Andrews High School experienced the newly designed Teachers Lounge during the December reveal.

The list of community and industry collaborators for the T. Wingate Andrews Teachers’ Lounge project includes: Parks Floor Covering, Crystorama, Red Egg Furniture, Gorilla Stone Inc., Marsh Cabinets, Consentino USA, Design Theory High Point, 360 Painting Triad, Phillips Collection, Classic Home LA, Splashworks, Howard Elliott, American Leather, Crestview Collection, Sherwin Williams, Tov Furniture, Kathy Kuo Home, Dream Team Services, Ampact Forwarding, Kas Rugs, Furnitureland South, Habitat for Humanity, Guilford County Schools, High Point Discovered, High Point Schools Partnership Technology Designer, Manners & Muscle, STL Realtor and House of Culler.

“Collectively, we want to say that we hope teachers feel loved in this room,” said Watson, speaking to the teachers before the reveal. “When you think about the things that are happening in these hallways, it can be kind of hard, their days can be hard. We hope that with the hard stuff that’s happening in these halls and in these classrooms, you can feel ‘soft’ in there.”

“And hopeful,” added Atkinson. “There’s a lot of evil out there going on in the world, but there is still a lot of good happening as well.”

“And joy,” said Johnson. “I want you to feel pure joy and know that you are appreciated every day.”

“We have only known each other for a little over a year and a half, and we met at VRD, Vacation Rental Design Conference, that Jane put together,” said Dela Cruz. “We wanted to do a project together that turned out to be a teachers lounge that was supposed to be a one-off. But seeing the joy, we knew we had an idea that could be special … This is going to be our third school, but this is a project that everyone is watching. This is a project that allows opportunities for others. It could not have been a better choice for this type of project as a better launching pad.”