Call for Radically Rural Creative Placemaking!

Promote your town and its radically rural creative placemaking -- and get a free ticket to the Radically Rural 2021 Summit!

Radically Rural’s Arts & Culture Track is celebrating creative placemaking in rural communities. We are hosting an open call to showcase the stories of 10 radical creative placemaking projects in rural communities for our 3rd session this year. Stripping it down to its core definitions, creative placemaking is all about using arts & culture to develop the identity, economic vibrancy, safety, and cohesion of a community. 

Radically Rural is a convening of inspired idea-people who love living and leading in rural communities. It is made up of seven different tracks, including Community Journalism, Clean Energy, Entrepreneurship, Healthcare, Main Street, Land & Community, and the Arts Track. In the Arts Track we have explored many topics including equity in philanthropy, capturing history through arts projects, how to ethically host major festivals on conserved land, how cultural communities can center themselves sustainably on a farm, and more. 

Learn more about Radically Rural.

This year the summit will be held September 22-23 in a hybrid format - in person sessions will be held at venues across the downtown of Keene, New Hampshire and every session will also be streamed live with opportunities to interact, for those who are not able to travel.

Our very first session in 2018 was on Creative Placemaking, and we’d like to come back to this theme. The field of Creative Placemaking has become a hot topic in recent years, and has seen growth in training opportunities, funding, and professionalization. 

Often training and funding opportunities focus on urban communities and centers, but there is fantastic work happening in our radically rural communities - some led by professionals and some led by volunteers because as we all know, rural communities don’t always have access to the same resources as urban communities. 

We want to know - what are the radical ideas, partnerships, and projects happening in your community, and would you like to share them at the Radically Rural 2021 Summit?

Every story submitted will be featured on an online display board. All project submitters will also receive the code to purchase discounted tickets to Radically Rural. If your project is chosen to present at Radically Rural, you will receive a free ticket.

Projects will be vetted by a panel of past Radically Rural presenters and the session facilitator. 10 projects will be selected to present at the Radically Rural Arts Track's 3rd session on September 23rd. These will be announced August 20th. The ten project presenters will meet virtually twice before the summit to connect with each other, get oriented with the technology, and practice. Each presenter will have 20 slides and 6.5 minutes to share their story and, at the end of all the presentations, will participate in a Q&A with the audience. All 10 presenters will receive a free ticket to attend the Summit, which can be used for the in-person event or for the interactive livestream. 

Radically Rural organizers will create a digital board of images and stories from all of the communities that submit their projects, which can be accessed through the Radically Rural website.

The submission form asks:

  • What is your project called

  • Where is your community

  • What is the population of the community served by your project

  • How much did your project cost

  • How many volunteers were involved in the project

  • Project description - what did you do, what did you hope to change, and what change did you actually see in your community

  • What partnerships made the project possible

  • What did you learn that you want to pass along to others

  • And contact information

Submit: https://forms.gle/S6LpT6fHXDWCNrGt6

Deadline: 8/15/21


What does Creative Placemaking Look like?