Small Town Big Arts

What happens when a 48-year-old rural arts center decides to close the gap between making art and making a living from it? In this episode, Geoff sits down with Brandon Phillips (Executive Director), John Ross (Board President), and Katie Shepard (Director of the Blacksburg Gallery) from the Fine Arts Center for the New River Valley to talk about their new Artrepreneur Program — an 8-week cohort-b...

What does it mean to truly open the doors of a performing arts center, not just physically, but for everyone in your community? Today on Small Town Big Arts, I'm talking with Shannon Kirkpatrick-Daniels, the Executive Director of the Appalachian Center for the Arts in Pikeville, Kentucky, known locally and lovingly as "The App." Situated in the heart of southeast Appalachia, The App is a dynamic h...

What does it look like to build a statewide network for rural arts and culture from the ground up? In this episode, Geoff Kershner sits down with Meg Greene, Program Director for Convenings and Collaborations at Mindpop, to explore the Rural Texas Arts and Culture Network — how it started, how it functions, and what it's teaching us about connecting artists and organizations across vast, underserv...

In this episode of Small Town Big Arts, host Geoffrey Kershner talks with Ash Hanson, Founder and Creative Executive Officer of the Department of Public Transformation (DoPT) — a groundbreaking organization that uses creativity as a catalyst for civic engagement in small towns across America. From their base in rural Minnesota, Ash and her team have helped communities reimagine public spaces, buil...

Founded in 1961 and now a fully accredited partner of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the American Alliance of Museums, Piedmont Arts in Martinsville stands as one of the few cultural non‑profits serving Virginia’s Southwest region—acting as a vital nexus for visual arts, performing arts, and education in a community with limited comparable resources. At the helm of this mission is Heidi Pink...

In this episode of Small Town Big Arts, we travel to Bath County, Virginia—one of America’s most arts-vibrant rural communities—to explore how Virginia funding, local and statewide, fuels creative life in a small town.  Host Geoffrey Kershner sits down with leaders from the Garth Newel Music Center and the Bath County Arts Association to discuss the powerful role of the arts in education, economic...

What do old Pizza Huts, small-town entrepreneurship, and the American dream have in common? In this episode of Small Town Big Arts, we sit down with filmmakers Matthew Salleh and Rose Tucker, creators of the documentary Slice of Life: The American Dream. In Former Pizza Huts. Traveling across the country—from Texas to Illinois—Salleh and Tucker uncover how communities breathe new life into familia...

The RiffRaff Arts Collective is a dynamic creative hub located in the heart of Princeton, West Virginia. Since its founding, RiffRaff has reimagined what arts-led revitalization can look like in an Appalachian town navigating post-industrial challenges. With a bold vision for community transformation, the organization has anchored a vibrant downtown renaissance—bringing together visual artists, mu...

Geoff takes his annual September visit to Keene, NH for the  Radically Rural Conference. At the conference he took the opportunity to interview two of the conference panelists. The second is Roy Schlieben of the MAXT Makerspace in Peterborough, NH (pop. 6,418). Their vision is that by unlocking the community’s creative potential we feed community vitality and drive innovation in the region.

Geoff takes his annual September visit to Keene, NH for the  Radically Rural Conference. At the conference he took the opportunity to interview two of the conference panelists. The first is Andrew Huckins of the Lupinewood Collective . This queer and trans community of artists have been living and working collectively since 2017 when they moved in to a falling-apart mansion with a dream to transfo...

Celebrating two years of Small Town Big Arts! Small Town Big Arts is collaborating with the University of Lynchburg on a new online course called Thriving Community Arts: Strategies for Sustainable Success. A limited number of discounted seats will be available to those who work at a nonprofit organization.  Please email  pdi@lynchburg.edu from your nonprofit account to receive a discount code. Th...

Sometimes the catalyst for artistic output isn’t an artist or an arts organization but an economic development office or a community development corporation. I call this "The Cultivator." I had the good fortune the last couple of months to colaborate with SMU DataArts as they released their Top 30 Most Arts-Vibrant Rural Counties study . This collaboration involved taking a deeper look at these fa...

As we move through the summer and many look to the 2024/25 academic year, Small Town Big Arts wants to put a new textbook on your radar. The book, Rural Arts Management, written by Elise Lael Kieffer and Jerome Socolof, provides a valuable resource for scholars, advanced students and reflective practitioners at the intersection of the arts and rural studies.  From the book's description: "The arts...

This month, we are sharing another and fantastic podcast about small town life. Small Town Secret Sauce is a show all about empowering you to create the life you want in a small town. Join Barton Quigley as he explores the joys of living a simpler life while succeeding in your business or community organization and overcoming the unique challenges of a smaller population. With inspiring interviews...

Strategic planning is not merely a bureaucratic exercise—it's a vital tool that small town arts organizations can use to define their future and ensure their relevance and resilience in their community. With all this said, strategic planning can be extremely difficult for small organizations in small communities. Bandwidth is at a premium and this includes bandwidth of time, finances and people. S...

In January's podcast, Geoff shared five successful organizational models he has seen emerge repeatedly in multiple communities. The Collaborator, The Center, The Facilitator, The Enclave and The Developer. To learn more read:  Successful Business Models for Small Sown Arts Delivery Small Town Big Arts would now like to add a sixth  organizational model, "The Torchbearer." Listen to find out more. 

Small Town Big Arts has identified that one of the key qualities that leads to small community organizational longevity is that the art work produced reflects with specificity the community the organization serves. The identity of the organization is tightly entwined with the community itself (history, culture, landscape, and/or geographical). This month's episode shows you a path to this type of...

Over the last year and a half of research in the field, Geoff has noticed that success in small community arts delivery often occurrs in organizations that have similar operating approaches. For this month'ss podcast, Geoff shares five successful organizational models he has seen emerge repeatedly in multiple communities. The are... The Collaborator The Center The Facilitator The Enclave The Devel...

Since 2015, SMU DataArts has taken a look at the arts vibrancy of every community in the United States. This study, through 13 variables, itendifies the top 40 most vibrant arts communities each year. https://culturaldata.org/arts-vibrancy-2023/executive-summary/ Geoff has the honor of speaking with SMU DataArts' Research Director Jen Benoit-Bryant about the study, its variable, and what makes the...

Geoff engages in a thoughtful conversation with Margaret Hancock, the Executive Director of the Virginia Commission for the Arts. Committed to upholding the Commission's mission, Margaret is actively advocating for the equitable distribution of state funds to reach every municipality in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Notably, the current disparity in funding primarily affects smaller rural communit...

Keene, NH has about 23,000 residents and is the home of Keene State College. It is two hours from Boston and about three hours from Burlington. There is no major interstate and the last leg of the drive from Logan International Airport weaves down two lane roads. Nestled in Downtown Keene is an old brick warehouse. It is home to a fantastic partnership between multiple businesses and organizations...

This is the first of two episodes this month. The first focuses on a fantastic organization right in my own backyard; Wolfbane Productions. Wolfbane is in Appomattox, Virginia. The county of Appomattox has a population of 16,353 and is home to the historic site where General Lee surrendered to General Grant, ending the Civil War. The community, about 18 miles from Lynchburg, VA, is an agricultural...

This month I have a brief episode I recorded at the Radically Rural conference in Keene, NH. I plan to do two episodes in October and I have some fantastic stories to share from my time in New England. For more information on the Radically Rural conference, please visit: https://www.radicallyrural.org/

As we enter Season 2, we look at two different models of patron and donor engagement for small community arts organizations: the subscription and the membership. The decline of subscriptions over the decades is not new news to those in the arts administration field, but this old model of ticket engagement isn't without its modern-day merits. Memberships have their patron engagement benefits and ar...

It has been one year since Small Town Big Arts was launched. The genesis of this online resource for small town arts delivery came from a strategic planning process facilitated for Second Stage Amherst, a community arts center in Amherst, Virginia. Geoffrey Kershner, host and founder of Small Town Big Arts discovered in supporting Second Stage in their planning that there were no consolodated reso...