HomegrownHandmade: Art Roads and Farm Trails of North Carolina
Project fostering alliance between North Carolina arts and agriculture. Series of Agri-Cultural Trails: self-directed driving trails in 72 N.C. counties including art galleries, horse farms, “u-pick” farming operations, locally owned restaurants that feature N.C. food products and B&B inns. Project of North Carolina Arts Council, North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service and HandMade in America, with support from Golden LEAF Foundation.

Appalachian Regional Commission
U.S. Government agency with an online resource center for rural development through arts, culture and entrepreneurship.

Appalshop
Whitesburg, Ky., media-arts and cultural center celebrating culture and voicing concerns of people living in the Appalachian Mountains; home of Roadside Theater. Training in community arts techniques.

Art Farm Project
Art exhibitions outdoors at Middle Rocombe Farm, an organic farm near Newton Abbot, Devon, England. Artists in South Devon used redundant farm buildings and surrounding landscape to produce large exhibitions and create an artist network.

Art That Works: T. Allan Comp and the Reclamation of a Toxic Legacy
Profile of T. Allan Comp, founder of AMD&Art (Acid Mine Drainage and Art), a project to reclaim toxic former coalmines using science, design, sculpture and history. Discusses community involvement in a reclamation project in Vintondale, Pa. By Eric Reece, author of "Lost Mountain: Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia" (Riverhead, 2006). Published online in DemocraticVistasProfiles: Essays in the Arts and Democracy by the Center for Arts Policy, Columbia College Chicago, 2006. 12 pp.

Art in the Park Community Arts
Community-driven large-scale events, projects and arts partnerships in Lewisburg, W.V. Annual themes (ex., 2005: arts and environmental education; massive sculpture installation on local natural history at Dorie Miller Park).

Arts and Humanities in Rural America
From the National Agricultural Library at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Voluminous U.S. government resource about arts and humanities projects and trends in rural areas, including funding trends and resources, community benefits, economic impact, planning resources, case studies, best practices and model programs.

Aune Head Arts
Rurally based contemporary arts organization working closely with artists and communities in and around Dartmoor National Park, Somerset, England, since 1996. Commissions, residencies, workshops, training, professional development, building relationships with rural communities through artist-led creative projects. MA in Arts & Cultural Management at Dartington College of Arts. Projects: Focus on Farming, Women in Farming, Big Dance on Dartmoor.

Barn Again!
Initiative by National Trust for Historic Preservation. Founded with Successful Farming magazine in 1987 to preserve historic farm buildings; has nationally touring arts exhibitions.

Bread and Puppet Theater
"One of the oldest non-commercial self-supporting theaters in the country. Based since 1970 in rural northern Vermont, the theater continues to create shows around political and social themes, and is committed to community engagement, often involving large groups of volunteers in its productions." Founding Director Peter Schumann.

Buddy Holly Center
Community art center in Lubbock, Texas, that memorializes musician Buddy Holly and other performing artists and musicians of West Texas. Exhibitions, annual music symposium.. Annual Extensive community programs, including education, hospital and high-school training programs.

COMPAS
Community-driven Minneapolis organization offering WAITS (Writers and Artists in the Schools), grants to neighborhood arts projects addressing social issues, cultural arts presentations in the schools, Minnesota Rural Arts Initiative and arts activities for battered women.

COPIA
The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts. Nonprofit "discovery center" in California's Napa Valley with artists' exhibitions, concerts, films, lectures, performances and special gardens, including Forks in the Road and Edible Gardens (children).

Caldera
Nonprofit arts-education organization with a mission to foster creativity among underserved youth and adults, "believing that the arts and the out-of-doors are powerful vehicles for fostering creativity and a strong sense of self-worth." Programs take place in schools and community centers throughout Portland and Central Oregon, and at Caldera’s Blue Lake facility in the Oregon Cascades. Programs: arts partnerships, artist school residencies, summer arts retreats, apprenticeships, retreats for professional artists and writers.

Center for Rural Strategies
Communications organization that helps rural communities and nonprofit organizations incorporate media and communications into their work in support of strategic goals. Media campaigns. A Cross-Sector Resource.

Coleman Center for the Arts and Culture
Community art center in York, Ala., established by citizens' grassroots efforts. Exhibitions, community-arts and public-art residencies, municipalWORKSHOP. Center houses public forum space and town library.

Dell'Arte Players
Home of Dell'Arte Players, Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre, Mad River Festival and Education Through Art. Located in Blue Lake, Calif., and devoted to development of "Theatre of Place." Offers training in community arts techniques.

Documentary Gallery of Student Action with Farmworkers
Project of Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies and Student Action with Farmworks (SAF). whose mission is to bring students and farmworkers together to learn about each other's lives, share resources and skills, improve conditions for farmworkers, and build diverse coalitions working for social change. Gallery exhibits online.

Downside UP
Documentary film about the changes in North Adams, Mass., resulting from the opening of MASS MoCA. By Nancy Kelly, No. Adams native.

East Cumbria Countryside Project
rural management agency in northwest England. Works to create a diverse and thriving rural area, high quality landscape and wildlife, recreational access, regeneration based on sustainable management of natural resources. Includes Andy Goldworthy's Sheepfolds Sculture Trail and a Poetry Path by local poet Meg Peacocke and stone lettering artist Pip Hall.

El Teatro Campesino
Chicano Farmworkers Theater, organized in 1965 to support Cesar Chavez's farmworkers movement in California. Newsletter, store, history.

Front Porch Institute
Dedicated to exploring role of arts and culture in community-making process rural and small communities. Assists organizations and individuals in understanding their own sense of community and culture. Created by Patrick Overton in 1996.

Highlander Research and Education Center
Educational programs and research into community problems; residential Workshop Center for grassroots social-change organizations. Based in New Market, Tenn., with a strong history in Southern labor movements, Civil Rights Movement and Appalachian people's movements. A Cross-Sector Resource.

Kultivator
Experimental cooperative of organic farming (Dyestad Organic Farm) and visual art practice (Art Initiative 16:2) situated in rural village of Dyestad, Öland Island, southeast coast of Sweden. Agri-Culture Shop; Guest Atelier/Project Room; In/Site and Out/Site spaces for meetings, seminars, screenings, installations; Whie cube Made Out of Cow Dung for exhibitions, gatherings. Maria Lindmark, Henric Stigeborn, Malin Lindmark Vrijman, Mathieu Vrijman.

Land
Education and arts project of the East Lancashire Regional Park regeneration initiative led by the Lancashire Economic Partnership in the North of England. Involves local people in making a positive difference to their own surroundings through creative activity led by professional artists. Woodland walks, landscape features, exhibitions, documentation, recordings, teacher training, parades, storytelling.

Littoral
U.K. nonprofit arts trust with projects in Art & Agriculture, Rural Arts & Culture, Craft & Environment, Ireland/Arts & Trade unions, Deep Practice/Art & Sustainability.

Main Street Project
Rural, grassroots public-policy and cultural-organizing initiative that works to "document the economic challenges facing people in rural communities, give voice to their hopes and aspirations, and the tools to create change." Education, training, cultural organizing, civic-engagement strategies to build and sustain community-based leadership. Projects: Latino Leadership Project, Raíces, Rural Civic Engagement, Rural Latino Enterprise Initiative, Rural Media Project. Based in Minneapolis, Minn.

Mississippi Action for Community Education (MACE)
Nonprofit, minority rural-development organization created by community leaders in 1967 to stimulate physical, social and economic development in rural Mississippi Delta. Cultural Arts Program with annual Delta Blues Festival, writing competition, Blues in Schools, film festival, international tour, internships. Also housing program and Women's Business Center. Based in Greenville, Miss.

Mississippi Cultural Crossroads
After-school program since 1976 that trains young people to document life in Claiborne County, Miss. Has Peanut Butter and Jelly Theater, troupe of seven high-school students who do stage productions promoting literacy. Also Young Person's Cultural Exchange program.

Mountain Community Radio
Independent community radio station based at Appalshop in Whitesburg, Ky., broadcasting music, news and community-affairs programming, staffed mostly by Appalachian volunteers; also Web-broadcast on Yahoo.

On the Edge
Team of artists and researchers conducting an inquiry into the value of art as action between individuals in the everyday" in rural Scotland. Affiliated with Gray's College of Art. Arts projects, publications.

Opera House Arts
Community arts space at Stonington Opera House in historic building in Deer Isle, Maine. Performances, new works based in local oral histories, community playreading series, documentaries on local culture and practices, family theater-arts series, local site-specific projects. Carol Estey, Judith Jerome, co-artistic directors. Founded by Linda Pattie.

Pale Girl in the African Sun
Theater artist Maureen Towey's documentation of her year in South Africa as a Fulbright Scholar researching how performance can help re-imagine community identity. Includes slide shows and journal.

Panopticons
Arts and regeneration project of East Lancashire Regional Park initiative led by the Lancashire Economic Partnership in the North of England to erect 21st century landmarks (Panopticons) across East Lancashire 2003-2007, as symbols of the renaissance of the area.

Planning for Grassroots Arts Development: A Research Study of Nine Communities in Transition
Three-year 1973 study of first rural arts award made by National Endowment for the Arts, which identified five small Wisconsin towns and undertook a stepwise arts development program there. Compared attitudes of people to the arts in these towns with four "control communities" - towns demographically similar, with no arts infrastructure. During 2004-5, the Wisconsin Arts Board and others will revisit these communities and two others to see what has happened since. By Maryo Ewell and Peter Ewell (Arts in Society, 1975).

Populist Arts Movement
"The Populist Art Movement Altering the Face of America," speech by Janet Brown, executive director of South Dakotans for the Arts.

Renewing the Countryside
Nonprofit organization based in Minneapolis, Minn., whose mission is to provide inspiration, ideas and assistance to individuals and communities who are looking for sustainable ways to strengthen their rural communities and reduce poverty. Database with hundreds of stories of farmers, artists, business owners, community leaders, nonprofit organizers, youth and entrepreneurs, filed by topic or region. Includes arts and culture. Resources, tool kit, Food Works, Green Routes, Rural Renaissance Network, store, publications, newsletter.

Roadside Theater
New (2001) Web site for the Central Appalachian community-based theater company. Has full press kit, plus a Reading Room with articles about Roadside, grassroots theater and the Appalachian region.

Robert E. Gard Foundation
Dedicated to preserving the legacy of Robert E. Gard, founder of the Wisconsin Idea Theater and father of the U.S. grassroots theater movement

Rural School and Community Trust
National nonprofit promoting place-based education in rural schools. Training, networking, technical assistance, coaching, mentoring, research, publications. See practices for "Promoting Arts & Cultural Heritage." A Cross-Sector Resource.

Rural Studio
Auburn University architectural program where students collaborate with communities in one of the poorest region of the nation. Founded by Dennis K. Ruth and late Samuel Mockbee.

Shared History
Family history project by descendants of slaves and slave owners from Woodlands Plantation, Midway, S.C. Directed by Felicia Dryden.

Sheepfolds
Artist Andy Goldsworthy's major countywide sculpture project in the Lakes District, Cumbria, England.

Shifting Ground: Art in Rural Contexts
Partnership project combining academic and practice-based research. Includes papers, conference presentations and a full account of the Ground Up program of temporary public art in rural county Clare in Ireland. Partners: Arts Office of Clare County Council and School of Humanities, Galway/Mayo Institute of Technology.

Strengthening Rural Economies through the Arts
Study showing how states are turning to arts-based economic development strategies to revive rural economies. Case studies, examples of successful programs, research citations, useful quotes. Written, published by NASAA, National Governors Association and NEA, 2005.

Swamp Gravy
Georgia's official "folklife play," based on the small town of Colquitt's oral history and performed by the people who live there; outstanding example of new community theater. Has Swamp Gravy Institute for community theater training.

The Barnstormers
Collective of public artists from New York and Tokyo whose art "mecca" is the rural town of Cameron, N.C.

The Windmill Projects
Complete text of Robert E Gard's "Arts in a Small Community � A National Plan" (a.k.a. "The Windmill Book") from the late 60s, including new supplements and follow-up studies of Windmill projects in rural Wisconsin.

Thriving Arts: Thriving Small Communities
Study of ten communities with populations from one to six thousand, identifying five key ingredients to growing an “arts-active” community: • Underlying social context – attitudes and values grounded in acceptance of differences, a welcoming openness and a pride of place • Informal and community-based arts – a valuing of arts in everyday life • Leadership with a broad vision for cultural development and an empowering style • Social networks – integration of the arts into the larger structures of community life • Support to infrastructure development. Written by Sharon Rodning Bash; published by Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (Minnesota), 2003.

Thriving Arts: Thriving Small Communities
Study of ten small Minnesota communities finding five key ingredients to developing an "arts-active" community: valuing diversity, openness and pride of place; valuing arts in everyday life; leadership with vision for cultural development and an empowering style; social networks; support for infrastructure development. Written by by Sharon Rodning Bash; published by Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, St. Paul, 2006.

Tohono O'odham Community Action
Independent grassroots organization in Tohono O'odham (formerly known as Papago) Nation, Sonoran Desert, 60 miles west of Tucson, Arizona, creating culturally based responses to problems of severe poverty, health, juvenile violence, lack of education, loss of language, traditions and ceremonies. Includes Community Arts Program to revitalize tribal cultural traditions. Online gallery. Founded by artist Terrol Dew Johnson and organizer Tristan Reader, recipients of Ford Foundation's Leadership for a Changing World Award.

Tostan
African grassroots organization using the arts in nonformal education in local languages (the Community Empowerment Program) to educate poor villagers in Senegal and neighboring countries about development and human rights. Uses modern and traditional African oral techniques, including theater, storytelling, dance, artwork, song, debate, and the sharing of personal experience. "Community-led successes" in six countries in West and East Africa: abandoning female genital cutting, ending child marriage, promoting grassroots democracy, improving maternal and child health, preventing and treating malaria and more. Microcredit program, prison project.

Western Folklife Center
Based in Elko, Nev. Home to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, Ranch Communications, Voices of Youth. Digital storytelling training.

Wormfarm Institute
Programs "reintegrating culture and agriculture" at New Erth WormFarm CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in rural Wisconsin, supporting the idea that "sustainability" includes a vibrant creative community. Artist residencies, Wormworks Youth Outreach Program and Renewal Gardens, Artward Bound, Meyer Oak Grove project, Wormcastings Foundry, community murals, exhibitions, concerts.

myvillages.org
Initiates discussion and practice-based projects addressing notion of the village within contemporary cultural discourse and development. By artists Kathrin Böhm (Germany, U.K.), Wapke Feenstra (Netherlands) and Antje Schiffers (Germany). Projects in artist's home villages: farmers' videos and artists' exhibited and bartered; with village women, establishment of line of goods for market stall at village fete. 2003 Village convention: contextual Art in Rural Environments (England).