Arts & Culture @ 2015 Rural Assembly

This year’s National Rural Assembly was unique because nearly one-third of the participants represented rural arts and culture practitioners, funders, and community leaders, hailing from a wide diversity of experiences (and zip codes). All agreed that rural arts and culture are essential to the health, wealth, and sustainability of our communities, and their sessions together focused on:

  • Practicing inclusion
  • Learning from one another
  • Identifying common strengths and challenges
  • Developing talking points to advance and strengthen rural creative placemaking

This year’s cohort grew from previous gatherings and discussions including:

Throughout the 2015 sessions, participants discussed why it is important to create strong arts and culture components within the Rural Assembly’s platforms and messaging:

  1. Arts and culture are foundational to who we are as rural people by showing who we are and how we are connected.
  2. Rural arts and culture are essential for comprehensive community development including community health, intergenerational exchanges and cultural transformation.
  3. Rural placemaking is a long-term commitment that requires sustainable investments and risk capital. Rural people are extremely innovative and can create their own metrics and time frames for funding.

Drawing Resilience: Jaiden Dokken

Jaiden Dokken is a writer, printmaker, ceramicist, cidermaker, and self-described highly persistent pen pal. They are Clallam County’s first Poet Laureate and will spend the next two years bringing poetry to the northwesternmost corner of Washington State. Dokken’s work has been published in Fiction International, Algorithm, Muses and Vices, SpeakEasy, Superfroot Magazine, and Pile Press. They are an editor and reader for Perennial Press.

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How to share your story at Everywhere

Save the date for Rural Assembly Everywhere, a multimedia production designed by and for rural leaders and their allies, on June 28th!

A free virtual event, Everywhere: Toward Safer, More Connected Communities will explore the ways rural people are pushing back against harmful policies and narratives and the steps they are taking to create safer, more connected communities.

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Coming soon: Rural Assembly Everywhere Summer 2023

Save the date for Rural Assembly Everywhere, a multimedia production designed by and for rural leaders and their allies, on June 28th!

A free virtual event, Everywhere: Toward Safer, More Connected Communities will explore the ways rural people are pushing back against harmful policies and narratives and the steps they are taking to create safer, more connected communities.

Read More »