Radically Rural sessions to explore how the arts connect us

The arts as a way to grow community connection — and as an antidote to rural isolation — will be a focus of this year's Arts and Culture track at the Radically Rural summit in Keene in October. "At this moment, I think the arts are a means of building community and connecting people in real space and real time. We're looking at technological shifts and societal pressures that pull us apart," says Geoffrey Kershner, director of the MFA program in Arts Leadership program at Randolph College in Virginia. "The arts are really critical in drawing us together." That idea will be explored through two subsessions the track is running in collaboration with the Education and Entrepreneurship tracks. Kershner is leading the track. Helping plan the track is Hannah Matangos, communications manager at Art of the Rural, a Minnesota-based nonprofit that supports rural and native artists across the continent. Through various conversations and workshops, Kershner says, they'll explore themes of connection, how the arts can bridge gaps between different subsets of rural communities and third spaces in those communities that can be a way for people to connect. "One of the things that has come up … is navigating the isolation that people are feeling," Kershner says. "The arts is great at breaking down those barriers and creating a sense of belonging." He adds that the plan to discuss the importance of third spaces will address that sense of belonging. Third spaces are places in local communities where people from different walks of life often gather and mingle, like coffee shops and libraries. Matangos says the arts can also be a way to fuel discussions around changes that need to happen in small rural communities. "One of the things we also hope to do throughout is showcasing how arts can be this vehicle for having hard conversations in ways that can be accessible and inclusive of a variety of perspectives and voices and lived experiences at once," Matangos says, adding that the arts can be used for both "visioning and storytelling." Subsessions The Arts and Culture track will co-host two subsessions on Wednesday, Oct. 7, which will involve discussions, collaborative art projects and visits to several of those third spaces that are popular in Keene. Kershner says the first subsession will meet at 9 a.m. behind the Monadnock Food Co-op for a walking tour that will include Brewbakers Cafe and bring together the Arts and Culture track and the Entrepreneurship track to provide a look at the business, which offers vendor space as well as arts-based classes. Nova Arts, a Keene nonprofit, organizes live music at Brewbakers in the evening. "It's a really great collaborative model for the arts that pairs both a for-profit venture alongside creative entrepreneurs, as well as a pretty inventive nonprofit organization," Kershner says. Following the visit to Brewbakers, the group will have a discussion about creative entrepreneurship in small communities. "We want to talk about the way artists are entrepreneurs," Matangos says. Part of the discussion will focus on what kind of support artists currently receive in their communities and how that support could be bolstered. The subsession will involve a presentation by the Manoomin Arts Initiative, an Indigenous-led arts collective based in Minnesota that supports artists within the White Earth Nation and surrounding communities by creating public art projects, organizing arts festivals and supporting artist residencies. "Their approach with us is really looking at how entrepreneurship operates with creatives in smaller communities," Kershner says, adding that it's exciting to have Midwestern tribal voices represented in the track sessions. The afternoon subsession, "Fostering Intergenerational and Intercultural Learning in Rural Communities," will start at 1 p.m. at Birdies, a cafe at 18 Main St. in Keene. It will be co-hosted with the Education track. Matangos says this session will focus on "nontraditional resources and spaces for learning at the community level." That session will involve a panel discussion around communal learning, outside of the classroom and in third spaces, as well as smaller breakout discussions, Matangos says. A highlight of the afternoon sessions will be a workshop during which the tracks will make two collages they can present later at a group gallery show at Birdies. In doing the collages, participants will be "reflecting on ways that intergenerational communal learning shows up for our own communities and also our own experiences," Matangos says. That the Arts and Culture track is joining with two other tracks is one of the most exciting parts of this year's summit, Kershner says. "I don't think the arts ever really work in isolation, so I think our orientation to collaborating with two tracks from the jump is actually pretty true to the way the arts are strong in smaller communities."