Radically Rural to launch 8th annual summit

In just two months, the streets of downtown Keene will be bursting with new life as hundreds of people with a sharp focus on growing and sustaining their local communities arrive for the eighth annual Radically Rural summit. For three days in October, about 500 people from rural communities around the country will participate in workshops, talks, panel discussions and more focusing on sustaining every facet of local communities – from agriculture to small-town journalism and beyond. In addition to hundreds of attendees, the summit will host around 50 to 80 speakers. Set for Oct. 7-9 this year, the summit began in 2018 as a partnership between the Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship and The Keene Sentinel newspaper. The original goal was to use downtown Keene as a kind of conference space where people who are passionate about local, rural communities could come together to exchange ideas about how to make those communities thrive. "It was meant to bring rural folks together to learn about grassroots ideas that are working," says Lillian Chase, program and development coordinator for the Hannah Grimes Center. "For instance, what's working in rural Maine that might work here?" Each year, the summit features multiple tracks focused on different elements of rural community life. Those tracks are Arts and Culture, Clean Energy, Community Journalism, Land and Community, Main Street, Entrepreneurship, All in For Health and Education, new this year. In the past, Chase says those tracks were clearly separated with participants focusing primarily on their track topic throughout the duration of the summit. This year, she says, Radically Rural is moving in a different direction: Organizers have been working on ways to integrate the tracks, so participants can share ideas and interact with each other. They have added a day to the summit. Rather than starting on a Wednesday, as in the past, the first day of the summit will be a Tuesday, devoted to individual track sessions — similar to the approach Radically Rural took in previous years. But the following two days will see tracks come together for sessions that pertain to their topics, thus allowing for sharing ideas among participants from different tracks and backgrounds. In line with the idea of more integration among tracks is the theme of this year's summit: Rural Resonance. Chase says the theme comes from the concept of sharing ideas among a group of people – even if they have different interests. "It's the idea that a single vibration bounces off of things and grows," she says. "People are saying the best part of the summit is getting to interact with people whom they wouldn't normally," she adds. The theme of "Rural Resonance" will also be underscored in the two keynotes, which will highlight the importance of ideas that resonate among members of local communities. One keynote, set for Thursday, Oct. 9, will focus on libraries, specifically as key gathering places in rural areas. Three librarians from rural communities around the country will participate in a panel discussion about how libraries can serve small communities beyond simply providing reading material. "In rural areas, libraries are one of the only places you can go for resources, so I'm really excited about that keynote," Chase says. The closing keynote, "Mending the Arc: Stories that Guide Us Forward," will focus on storytelling and connecting past, present and future. The keynote will be led by Ed Heisler and Alexis Flanagan of the Resonance Network, a Maryland-based organization that focuses on relationship building in communities. Participants will engage in brief story circles and use prompts that they have learned over the course of the summit. Looking forward The summit offers ways to address the problems facing many rural communities today. Chase says those challenges include inability to get access to the same level of federal funding that they have in years prior. "We're focusing on grassroots work. Sometimes it's helpful for people to build what works from the ground up," she says. The summit is also a chance to highlight the importance of supporting local businesses and organizations in smaller communities. "There are great local businesses supporting the economy … We're highlighting those things to see how we can become more self-sufficient in our communities," Chase says. Ultimately, Chase says, she hopes participants will walk away from this summit with new contacts. "We also hope that people have more ideas and feel inspired to act on them," she says. "They can take that hope and inspiration into their own lives." For more information on the summit, visit radicallyrural.org.