University Place  Donna Neuwirth Revitalizing Rural Life Through the Arts  September 9, 2012 UP783   cc >> Greetings, everyone, and welcome. I'm Jane Elder, the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, which organizes these Academy Evening talks. Tonight is a special one because we're co-presenting with our friends from the Robert E. Gard Wisconsin Idea Foundation. This event rekindles our long connections with Robert Gard and his legacy. As many of you know, Mr. Gard was a pioneer in the field of rural arts, and he was also president of the Academy in the 1970s. Though he passed away in 1992, his writings and his legacy live on and still offer us wise and passionate counsel about the vital role of the arts in our communities, especially rural ones. You'll learn more about Mr. Gard in a few minutes. For now, let me just say how delighted we are to have you here tonight, and it's going to be an inspiring evening. Now, let's move on to tonight's topic: "Creating Community and Revitalizing Rural Life Through the Arts." Wisconsin has a proud legacy of rural and community arts. For a look at where things are now, both nationally and locally, you'll hear from Mitch Menchaca of Americans for the Arts and Donna Neuwirth and Jay Salinas from the Worm Farm Institute based in Reedsburg. 

Mitch is with us from Washington, DC, where he's the director of Local Arts Advancement at Americans for the Arts. He leads a team that cultivates local arts development in communities across the country. He also serves on the Gard Foundation board. Mitch's national perspective will be complemented by Donna and Jay's view from Sauk County. Donna and Jay are former Chicagoans who started an organic CSA farm in Reedsburg, and that farm morphed into the nonprofit Worm Farm Institute which runs a number of fascinating projects. The major one's coming up very soon, the Second Annual Farm Art Detour which begins in just three days and is part of the Fermentation Fest. You can find details at FermentationFest.com, and I'm sure you'll learn more from Donna and Jay. The Worm Farm Institute also runs the Woolen Mill Gallery in Reedsburg, an artist residency program and roadside culture stands which are artist designed and built roadside farm stands. Worm Farm received the 2010 Governor's Award in support for the arts and has received grant support from the NEA's Our Town Program and Art Place, which is a collaboration of national foundation's joining together to support creative place making across the US. Clearly, their work is attracting national attention. 

Now, I'd like to turn the podium over to Barbara Strauss at the Gard Foundation. In fact, she was one of its founders in the early 1980s. She edited the Gard Reader and currently resides in Cleveland. From her, you'll learn more about Robert Gard and his seminal work in rural arts and community building. [APPLAUSE]  >> Good evening. I'm Barbara Strauss, and I've been a member of the Robert E. Gard Foundation since 1980, when Bob was still alive. All 12 of our board members are in the audience tonight. Would you raise your hands? Take a look around. We're from North Carolina, Illinois, Washington, Ohio, and Wisconsin. And it's an expanded board these days, and we're delighted. 

First of all, I'd like to express our appreciation to the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters for the awesome relationship with the Gard Foundation since the foundation's beginning. I still recall sitting at a meeting in one of the lower level conference rooms in that white brick building, and we kept trying to decide, will this idea fly? Well, here we are, 32 years later. The foundation's mission is fostering healthy communities through arts-based development. And that's what our conversation tonight will address. Bob Gard believed that creative communities must start with the creative individual and that all individuals are creative.  We want to begin this evening with some of Bob's own words, taken from the Gard Reader. And I think you got a bookmark, and there's a way to get at the Gard Reader at the website at the bottom of the page. It's free, it's open to the public, you can download it, and we invite you to do that. I was the editor of the Reader and I just want to share one of my favorite passages with you. This is an excerpt called "Altering the Face and Hearts of America from Grassroots and Mountain Wings." Bob Gard was one of the first people, along with the University of Wisconsin Extension, to get a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. 

And this was a time when they were funding the large orchestras and all. And so he had this idea, supported by Leonard Bernstein, and it was to explore arts in rural communities. They worked with five communities, and towards the end of the grant they were preparing a report, a book, and I'm reading here. The book we prepared while experimenting was going on was called The Arts in the Small Community: A National Plan. We distributed more than 40,000 nationally, and now the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies has reprinted and is distributing them now. One small thing remains to be said: many persons wanted to help, and they did. Some asked why they should. And for the book, I wrote this poem. If you try, what may you expect? First a community Welded through art To a new consciousness of self A new being Perhaps a new appearance People proud Of achievements which lift them Through the creative Above the ordinary A new opportunity For children To find exciting experiences In art And to carry this excitement on Throughout their lives A mixing of peoples And backgrounds Through art A new view Of hope for mankind And an elevation of man Not degradation New values for individual And community life, And a sense That here, in our place, We are contributing To the maturity Of a great nation If you try, you can indeed Alter the face and the heart Of America. And now, our panel. 

[APPLAUSE]  >> Good evening. >> Good evening. [LAUGHTER] >> I know it's rainy and it's cold, but if I'm up here, you should all sort of be awake, hopefully, so that I can get through my presentation. So, good evening. I'm Mitch Menchaca and I am the director of Local Arts Advancement, and, unfortunately and fortunately, this is my swan song. I will be leaving American for the Arts on Friday to go back to my performing arts roots at Chorus America. So, I'm excited to end here in Wisconsin. For my part of the presentation that I call, "I Come From," and I just have to say, since I'm here in Wisconsin, a piece of me does come from Wisconsin. My grandparents have a summer home in Burnett County near Duluth/Superior, so I feel like I am among family. So, I come from, originally, rural America. 

So, this is a Google map of the land around my parent's house. They live on five acres of beautiful, natural desert landscaping in the middle of Pinal County, Arizona. And coming from Casa Grande, I come from a history based on cotton, mining and the railroad. Except, for me, I come from the arts and culture of Casa Grande. The building on the left is Casa Grande Union High School, where I got my theater start. I thought I was going to be the next Broadway star out of Casa Grande. [LAUGHTER] They haven't had one yet. [LAUGHTER] But what's great about that building on the left is the high school moved, and they had this decision to knock down the old high school, but the city stepped in and said, no, no, no, we'll take over the old buildings, we're growing out of city hall. So, on the left is now the headquarters of Casa Grande Parks and Recreation, which I am excited because other youth are now getting the opportunity to experience arts and culture in that same venue through music, dance, and drama. The building on the right is now the Casa Grande Historical Society and Museum. 

It's actually a 1929 rock building that was the First Presbyterian Church in Casa Grande, and then when the Presbyterian church moved, they decided to shut it down and a morgue moved in. But, fortunately, they moved out so that the museum could move in. And I have to say that I come from this building for two reasons. One, it is the home of my community theater, the Casa Grande Valley Players, and then where I got my start in the arts and culture administration section. When the whole Broadway thing didn't work out, I came to the museum. So where I come from in rural America is in the arts, and that is my focus when I lived there and then when I moved on to college, etc. So, there's a lot of people that come from somewhere, and there is this whole talk right now about sense of place and placemaking. And what's interesting is in the arts world everyone's like, we've been doing this kind of placemaking for years, but we've never had big dollars attached to it. So, what is placemaking? It kind of puzzles people, in the arts, out of the arts. So I thought for the beginning of this, I would just bring the definition that the National Endowment for the Arts has posted when they came out with a study about placemaking. 

And I'm not going to read it all to you. This is bad PowerPoint, I know, with all the words. But the red really identifies that placemaking is about shaping the physical and social character of neighborhoods, towns, cities, etc, communities to animate public space, rejuvenate structures, improve local business, and to bring people together. And I will just tell you, on the national perspective, there is a lot of focus on the built environment about placemaking. We will give you money to rejuvenate a community. If you will build something, they will come. And there is a whole other section of art supporters and community members who say what about the sense of belonging, the sense of being in a community, the social impact? So, I'm very excited for the other panelists who will come after me because they do, I feel, form bridges. The built with the social and bringing farmers and artists together. So, we're in for a real treat tonight. But what I want to do is I want to focus, I underlined brings people together. 

And I want to talk about some stats coming from Washington. I was like, I'm here to help and bring my stats with me. [LAUGHTER] About the people, about this idea of the new normal, which I'm sure we've all heard about. And the new normal started off with the idea that people kept saying when the economy gets better, things will be great. Well, the economy is not going to bounce back which way we think it's going to be. We're going to be in an economic restructure. So we're going to have to do things very differently in this new economy, but I don't want to talk about economics. I'm from the arts. I didn't go to school for math. What I do want to talk about are the people and the demographics. 

And, actually, I gave part of this presentation somewhere else, and someone said, why do you use the international symbol for the restroom? [LAUGHTER] I'm like, it's people! [LAUGHTER] So, with these demographics, according to the US census, the population is going to grow by 42% by the year 2050. And out of that growth, the largest population that is growing is the Hispanic population. They're growing at a rate of 167% by the year 2050. I like to call it, and some people think it's crude, but the browning of America is happening. And then the other populations of 142% of growth are the Asian, 56% of the African American community. The non-Hispanic white, and these are census ways of talking, is growing at a rate of 1%. So, there are new demographics moving into your community. So if you see people who look a little different, it is the new normal, and it's interesting when we talk about arts and culture, these representations of these new communities need to be reflected in programming, in ideas, in community planning because there's even an underline, not just with adults, but 48% of children under the age of five now belong to an ethnic minority group. The majority of births are now coming from ethnic minorities. So we really have to redefine what is majority, what is minority in the new normal when we talk about sense of place, as people are making new homes. 

And what's interesting about these populations now is they participate in arts and cultural activities in nontraditional ways. They're going to festivals. They're going to clubs. They're going to non-arts venues. So as that population continues to grow with those families, we have to think about when we create arts and cultural programming about how these folks, the new populations coming in, are going to participate in the arts. They no longer want to sit in a dark theater and have someone talk to them on the stage, like tonight. [LAUGHTER] So, the minority/majority is happening People say, oh, in 2050 who knows? I could be hit by a bus. I don't know. It's already happening. So the yellow states right here are already states that the minority/majority has shifted. 

The Hispanic population has grown over the 51%. The blue are states where it's going to happen, and when I talked to my Arizona colleagues, some would like to disagree with that little statement, but it's going to happen. It's going to happen across the whole country. So, those are some of the demographic shifts that are happening with the population in the country. The next that I love to talk about are the four different generations living in the country. So there are four different generations right now who all have different views on things like the arts, on education, on the economy, but I hate to break it to you, we're actually not going to talk about four of them. We're going to talk about five of them. It is a scary situation because we are living longer, we are introducing the new generation, the iGen generation. And I'll talk about them later. And they're not really a fully fledged generation because the oldest person in that generation is 12. 

So, we have, right now, living, the silent generation or the traditional generation, the baby boomers, gen X, millennials or Gen Y, and then the iGeneration. So, silent generation, or the traditional generation, are those folks born between 1922 and 1945. They're hard-working. They have respect for authority and discipline. They are from the traditional family. They will write you a letter or a memo. And when it comes to money, they save, save, save. [LAUGHTER] So, when we also think about the arts, this demographic or generation is going to make those choices about how they're going to spend that money. The baby boomers, where my parents are, 1946 to 1964. They're workaholics. 

My parents, they still are working multiple jobs today. They're optimistic, though, and they're involved. Their family life is the disintegrating family. They will call me any time. My mother, she doesn't know time zone differences from me being in DC, but she wants to talk. But they were also the credit generation of buy now, pay later. So, tickets, put it on the charge card. The generation X, which I am part of, 1965 to 1980. We're self-reliant. We're skeptical, fun, informal. 

We were the latchkey kids. And it's call me at work only. And that's sort of where I take my mother's calls. [LAUGHTER] Even though I tell the receptionist don't put her through. [LAUGHTER] We're cautious and conservative with our money, and that is where, I think, I sit on the cusp of X and Y with that conservative money piece. So, the millennials, and these are the kids we like to talk about. We think that they're lazy, all that great stuff. But they are true multi-taskers. It's amazing when I give the intern projects where I'm like, this will keep her busy for, like, two weeks, and she comes back three hours later. "I'm done." [LAUGHTER] They are confident. 

They are extremely fun. Remember, X was fun. These kids are extremely fun. [LAUGHTER] They're very social, and they come from merged families. That means two things. One is they either had parents who had divorced and got remarried, so now they have four sets of parents, or their traditional generation grandparents are coming to live with them because they ran out of savings, they ran out of retirement. So we're seeing merged families in a couple of ways. These are the Internet and smartphone generation. And they earn money to spend money. So whenever we are talking and marketing and we're like how do we get that younger demographic? Well, this is why because they'll spend money like no one's business. 

So that's why we want to appeal to them. So I'm just going to touch on the fifth generation, which is the iGeneration. They are 2000 and beyond, and, again, the oldest one is 12 years old. Except we need to pay attention to these folks because as we talk about the arts and place, in six years they are going to be voting. And these kids have sort of had their iPhones, if they could,  would be built into their souls. They are easy introduction to technology. They truly do multi-task. They have a desire for immediate action. And they have the ability for technology at their fingertips. And what we're finding in this generation is it's much like the cultural participation I was talking about earlier with those ethnic communities. 

They want to participate in the arts. They want to get on-stage at the symphony and pick up the violin and play it. They want to do their arts experiences different. They also don't know anything about, unfortunately, the state and local and federal funding models or the 501(c)3. They don't care. So, this is something to keep thinking about in six years. And so that means when they vote and it's arts funding on the line, if they don't come to value it, they might vote against it. So, those are sort of the demographic piece of my talk. So, now, you have these new ethnic or cultural demographics. We know the generations, but where do they want to live? And since this is about rural arts, I want to just touch on that. 

The US census showed that there is a rural to urban migration happening which kills me. My hometown, like I said, is a rural community, but they don't call it rural and it's not urban. It's a bedroom community from Phoenix and Tucson which is unfortunate because they don't get the glamour of being rural, they don't get the glamour of being urban, they just are not even suburban. So there's this move to the urban center. Right now, in the US, according to the 2010 census, there are 308,745,358 people in the US. Fifty-one million of them live in rural America. That's only 17% of the nation's population. That went down from 29% in 2000. Now, I want to just state that through some of the research I did, it's not that people just picked up from rural America and moved to the city. There's now a focus on regionalization. 

When small urban towns actually come together and create mass, they're now being counted as urban communities. So, it's becoming more about population sizes, how cities integrate with each other. If you can't get to certain services in certain miles, then it becomes rural. If you go to the US census page, you'll see this lengthy, lengthy documentation about how they defined rural communities. So, why are people making this migration? And, really, in this recession it's because of lack of jobs is why people are moving. The opportunity isn't there. And in some of the readings I saw in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, it's about quality of life. So, it brings me back to how the arts can help. The arts are truly all within our communities. I knew it in my rural community. 

We know them in the rural communities here, but what I'm finding is that if you're not already involved in the arts in your rural community, you sometimes don't see it. When I go back to Casa Grande, Arizona, I don't see where the arts and cultural activity is happening because I'm not there in it. And I feel that my hometown no longer knows that community. This is really important to know, especially as we are thinking about new populations, but also not alienating our old one about knowing, always, what our communities want and need in terms of arts and cultural activities. What was true 38 years ago may not be true today, and what will be true today probably won't be true in 38 years. And the reason why I bring up 38 years is because that's when 2050 will happen. I know in 38 years I probably won't care about what's happening in my community. [LAUGHTER] But how can the arts help? To know thy community there are  certain questions that I always like to ask, and this comes from the Arts and Small Communities book, which you can find at GardFoundation.org. Shameless plug. Some of these questions are really important and I used to be a grant maker in a former life and these are questions that I would ask the arts community to really help know if they were ready to receive funding about, especially in community development grants. 

What is the character of your community? What is it like to live in your community? Is there a slogan, a logo, something dear to the community? And these two points, I'm just bringing up the red ones because of the conversation of the migration. What factors make people want to move to your community? And what makes people want to move out of your community? What challenges are facing your community? And what challenges are ahead for your community? So, always forward thinking. And I think it's always great for the arts to be thinking about these points, especially as you're developing programming, as you're working with other sectors. We also, at the Gard Foundation, thanks to our treasurer Harv Thompson, we like to think about who are our allies in communities. We're not alone. We need to be thinking about with the business community, I know this is preaching to the choir, but we need to have these community conversations to really move forward into the new normal, especially around creative placemaking. So I'm just going to end by coming back to the whole idea of creative placemaking, again, saying it's nothing that we're doing differently, it's just a new term. But the red highlighted things I think are always things that we have to be thinking about as we go forward with our work. We want to definitely shape the physical and social character of our community. We want to animate, rejuvenate, and improve a community that will bring people together. 

And I really hope that my hometown will always keep this close because when I do plan to retire there, I bought a piece of dead property next to my parents. [LAUGHTER] And I'd like to return and I hope that that's a good decision so I can go back to a place where I come from. So, thank you. [APPLAUSE]  >> I'm very happy to be here. Thank you so much for inviting us. Jay and I are going to tag-team here. So I'm going to begin, Jay's going to take over, and then I'm going to end. So there will be some shuffling around. In the rural town of Ashfield, Massachusetts, a couple of months ago, Jay and I met with colleagues from across the country who were involved in rural arts endeavors. I think they may be a couple of you in the audience here tonight. 

Not only was this an invigorating peer to peer exchange hard to come by in isolated rural areas, but it was shocking to see how many of us are out there and how varied, dynamic, and decidedly unquaint our activities. In one exercise, we were asked to share a truth in the context of rural arts. Perhaps it was no coincidence that the image chosen to accompany this talk on the Academy website was that of the word truth on a carved in the hillside photo taken during last year's detour about which you'll hear more later. There it is. Mine was this: I, too, contain multitudes. I am rural. I am urban. I am farmer. I am artist. I am introvert. 

I am impresario. I am exhilarated. I am exhausted. I am at home. I am a stranger. We live and work along the rural/urban continuum. As Jay and I share our story with you tonight, you will see that we did not resign from urban to become rural, and we didn't give up artists to be farmers. We did, however, shift our focus to what stood before us on our small farm. You can move the slide forward. On our small farm about 50 miles from here and found it alluring, complex, demanding, and beautiful. 

Through its 40 hilly acres and a dozen ramshackle buildings, that's one of them, we found our place in the community. And I use the word as Aldo Leopold did, in the sense of the biotic community which includes people, plants, animals, and the land itself. We were invited to speak to you tonight about revitalizing rural life through the arts, and we will share a bit of our history and outline several projects we believe are doing just that. It's important to note that the reverse is equally important. As our farm and 14 years of resident artists have taught us, rural life can also revitalize the arts. So, a bit of background. Worm farm. The name came to us in 1995, shortly after we moved from inner city Chicago to a former dairy farm in Wisconsin. The work of Charles Darwin and his book "The Formation of Vegetable Mold Through the Action of Worms" figured prominently, as did Bullwinkle cartoons. Check out the worm farm ranch, the worm ranch episode, which, by the way, is Lazy Jay's ranch. 

And I just discovered that recently. [LAUGHTER] Newly ruralized and hyper-alert to our novel surroundings, we learned about the fertile places left in the wake of earthworms. Seemingly lowly, mostly unseen, humble yet essential, literally subversive. Worms are fellow invasive Europeans. Not only inspire us but remind us not to take ourselves too seriously.  >> Within two years of our arrival, we began growing food for market and have done so ever since. First through community-supported agriculture, eventually in farmers' markets and through cooperative marketing initiatives. This has provided seasonal income, grounded us in this farming community, but it changed us. Maybe more importantly, it profoundly altered the way we interact with the world around us. They will never shake our urban roots. 

They've had rural shoots grafted to them, producing the hybrid we've become. I believe this experience, farming, would not have been so inspiring had it not been so foreign. We approached this work with an open mind and equal measures of enthusiasm and ignorance. Our previous experience in art and theater would not seem to serve as well on this endeavor but proved to be surprisingly relevant. As if we were both the products of university education, we approached agriculture as a field of study, as a body of knowledge to be acquired. We started on this path as a whole range of farmer training programs became available, so our experiential learning was enhanced by the County Extension, Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, and what is now called the MOSES Conference. There are countless books to be read, from how-to books like "Botany for Gardeners" and "Secrets of the Soil." Authors like Eliot Coleman, John Jeavons, and even Mel Bartholomew of Square Foot Gardening fame. But also broader and more conceptual offerings by the likes of Masanobu Fukuoka, Rudolf Steiner, Mas Masumoto, and of course Wendell Berry. They helped us understand not only the how of agriculture but also the why. They provided much needed context for the seemingly endless toil that is farming. 

A particularly resonant viewpoint on tilling the soil came from the late deep ecologist Paul Shepard. His skepticism about agriculture as a revolutionary strategy was reveled to us several years into our market gardening career. It was his contention that for countless millennia human beings had evolved to be hunter/gatherers. That this lifestyle better suited our environment, family structure, physiology and psychology. Hunter/gatherers spent less time securing food than did farmers. Chasing large herbivores across the savanna was what our outright posture, free hands, language skills, and social groupings evolved to facilitate. When the hunt was over, there was time to tell stories and sing songs. Contrary to popular understanding of a nasty, brute, and shore life, the hunter/gatherer actually had more leisure time to explore the mythopoeic and better understand the kinship of humans to the flora and fauna of their home range. Shepard contrast this with the lifestyle of tuber grubbers and goat herds. Tied to a piece of land that they will cultivate until both the soil and the farmer are exhausted. 

Then one must find more either through breeding large families destined to the same fate or by taking slaves to do the work the farmer is no longer able or willing to perform. Or there's always interns. [LAUGHTER] New land must be secured, and where to get it? From one's neighbor, of course, who's unlikely to surrender it willingly. We know what happens next. Shepard contends that agriculture is the dullest and most tedious existence that humans have ever contrived for themselves. Farmers are forced to be narrow in their thinking, suspicious of outsiders, and endlessly at odds with the world around them. Weather, insects, competing species of plant and animals become adversaries. We'd been running our small CSA for about three years when we read this, and though we barely qualified as beginning farmers, we could sense more than a kernel of truth in those words. We still find our work deeply satisfying but could see the limitations of becoming solely dependent upon agriculture for our living. We still maintained connection to our creative self that I was actually teaching part time at the UW Stevens Point, but we were already closing in on the middle age, too late to begin breeding a house full of farmhands, and had neither the interest nor the capacity to subjugate our neighbors. 

[LAUGHTER] We had to decide whether to focus on farming or seek balance between our vocations. And the reason we're here tonight is the result of that search for balance. So, when given the chance to share my revelatory truth with my colleagues in Massachusetts, this is what I shared. Despite what Paul Shepard says, farming, I believe, is a sacred calling, and I don't mean that in the self-serving, let's all respect hard-working farmers way. I mean sacred, as in confirm catholic, former alter boy, served countless midnight masses during holy weeks, enveloped in clouds of incense. Farmers immerse themselves in eternal mysteries every day. Going about one's chores in the morning has the distinct feel of a ritual. To bury a handful of seeds in well-manured soil and allow the sun and wind and rain and countless bacteria to act upon them. To facilitate the transformation from germ to fruit and gather these packets of condensed natural energy, the stuff of the Earth, and take them into our bodies in nourishment and celebration is no less miraculous than feeding the multitudes with a few loaves and fishes. A priest symbolically reenacts what is the quotidian reality for a farmer. 

A long time ago, I heard an artist, Christian Boltanski, say that all great and lasting art was about sex, death, and religion. Although I think he was being at least partly ironic, a casual glance through any standard art history text will, in large part, confirm this. And this is the second part of my truth, what farming and art have in common: sex, death, and religion. [LAUGHTER] Farmers manipulate the reproductive behavior of a variety of life forms from corn to cows, pig and carrots, lure them to the brink of sexual maturity and then decide what will be allowed to reproduce and what will be sacrificed. If it's done thoughtfully, that sacrifice can be acknowledged and celebrated. The stories we tell ourselves about those creatures that die on our behalf is the difference between holy communion and a drive-thru happy meal. [PHONE RINGING] >> Sorry. >> That's all right. The institute evolves slowly out of our seasoned passions and new found enthusiasms. Our meaningful rituals shaped by this very particular rural place we have come to know and love. 

In conjunction with the dedication for the -- project, an early social sculpture we did back in 19, late 20th century, I coined a term: culture shed. A noun. A geographic region irrigated by streams of local talent and fed by deep pools of human and natural history. And area nourished by what is cultivated locally. The efforts of writers, performers, artists, scholars, farmers, and chefs who contribute to a vital and diverse local culture. I had Sauk County in mind when I conceived that term. A truly unique place bordered on the east and south by the Wisconsin River with the great Sauk Prairie providing the foreground to the Baraboo Bluffs. Past the bluffs, the driftless area begins to emerge across the Baraboo River Valley. This land has supported mound builders and people who used raised-bed gardens over a thousand years ago, a few miles from where I now employ the same practice. It's where the Ho-Chunk Nation has been able to maintain their roots while the Sac and Fox peoples have been ethnically cleansed. 

It's a place that inspired Aldo Leopold, of course, but also August Derleth and lately David Rhodes and Krista Eastman. A place that fostered visionaries like HH Bennett, Dr. Evermor, and Ernest Hupeden. Home of Yellow Thunder, Clare Briggs, Agnes Moorehead, and Curt Meine. The International Crane Foundation, Circus World Museum, the Man Mound, the spiritualist camp in Wonewoc, a gathering for over a hundred years in a place known locally as Spook Hill, and the, uh, Wisconsin Dells. [LAUGHTER]  In 2000, the year 2000, we wrestled to reconcile our goals and aspirations with our cherished identities as anarchists and petitioned the Internal Revenue Service to grant us nonprofit status. This process forces to give structure and focus to some of the activities we had already started, primarily our artist residency program. Artists had come to the farm early and often. Before the formation of the institute, it was just our lives. A house in the country, an abundant garden, missionary zeal about growing food, limitless space, tons of rusty metal, and the bonus of regular bonfires form the basis of what would become the residency program. Unlike many that offer retreats, ours was something else. 

An engagement in the life of a working farm. Though most of the artist's time was devoted to their own practice, mornings working in the garden was an important part of the arrangement and what made a worm farm residency unique. Not for everyone, to be sure. Rustic at best. Collaborations with critters and weather inevitable. A worm farm resident artist lived close to the land. This is our foundational program. Each spring we invite a fresh crop of often young, mostly urban artists and writers across the country to our farm to get dirty, eat well, and make art. When it works well, the barn is a hive of activity. Light and music shooting from the gaps between the barn boards. 

Over the years, Donna and I have seen a pattern as each artist slowly shifts focus from what they initially proposed to what's in front of them. The rows of garlic, the iconic hill to the west, the nest builders, photosynthesis. The benefits are many. The farm benefits by having a bit of help. The artists benefit by immersion, by the submersion and the practical experience in what one artist described as calisthenics before heading into the studio. The farmers, our founders, benefit through the annual fusions of creative energy and enthusiasm. And our town benefits by providing a temporary habitat for these exotic nomads. Small towns benefit by a cohort of artists familiar with rural ways who might choose to live there. About the same time we formed the nonprofit, we bought and restored an old storefront on Main Street in downtown Reedsburg, and community took on a new meaning. The biotic community, community-supported agriculture, and our community interest that spanned thousands of miles were now tangibly linked to the proximate community, the town we lived and worked. 

Several projects emerged out of this, including the Woolen Mill Gallery, local history murals, and the ridiculous festival. The image is rolling up here. Each succeeding project represented a broader engagement with the proximate community while never losing the link to the urban places that formed us. Roadside culture stands may be the project that most literally links urban and rural culture and agriculture. They are a lively reimagining of the much beloved rural icon, the roadside farm stand. Built on mobile platforms by artists, architects, or design-build teams, culture stands serve as both functional public art and entrepreneur mobiles. For a market gardener, it's halfway between a pop-up canopy and bricks and mortar. They travel from market to market or to special events, or they can just appear where people congregate, providing and alternative to the increasingly saturated and often highly controlled farmers' markets. They might also sell small artworks, but curiously, there are more regulations that apply to the sale of art than vegetables. [LAUGHTER] We ask that they combine form and function, that they each highlight the vision of the creator and serve the needs of the vendor, and they enhance the vitality of places where they appear. 

 [LAUGHTER] >> Super big. That's the ridiculous puppet festival. [LAUGHTER]  Pictures are worth a thousand words, aren't they? So, over the years, our projects have grown in scope and complexity and we haven't done it alone. Sauk is the only rural county in the state with a grant program for the arts. With the help of these grants, we were able to conduct experiments, grow slowly, and put down roots. The Wisconsin Arts Board and the Wisconsin Humanities Council helped extend our reach and deepen our programs. We've been toiling happily in obscurity, just like our namesake, for over a decade. But this past year, the worm turned. [LAUGHTER] Sorry. Worm farm is in the fertile soil business. 

Literally growing organic vegetables on a farm and metaphorically for the creative work of artists and writers through our residency program, projects, and festivals, employing what the worms have taught us about unseen pathways and connections. Slowly building both cultural and agricultural infrastructure. Our current project provides and opportunity to make these pathways visible, the connections practical, and the possibilities palpable. Fermentation Fest, a live culture convergence, is about abundance and transformation. From grain to beer, from milk to cheese, from cabbage to kimchi, the process of controlled rot adds not only shelf life but strong flavors, dense nutrients, and, in some cases, altered states of consciousness. [LAUGHTER] Ideas ferment too and live culture can refer to both yogurt and dance. The Farm Art DTour is a central element of our 10-day community event starting this Friday, just three days from now. A collaboration with county government, UW Extension, the local chamber of commerce, farmers, artists, and cheesemakers. A 50-mile self-guided drive. The detour meanders through the beautiful unglaciated hills and valleys of northwest Sauk County. 

Good timing. [LAUGHTER] Working lands punctuated by farm-based art installations, culture stands, field notes, roadside poetry, and pasture performances. The DTour is receiving national attention as a result of receiving support from, as you heard before, NEA Our Town grant and ArtPlace, both for creative placemaking. These new initiatives recognize both the power of building on existing assets and the unique ability of the arts to celebrate and amplify. In 2011, in its pilot year, this is only year two, the DTour brought close to 4,000 people through four small rural towns and supported a minimum of 32 businesses. This year, with favorable weather, those numbers will double. This photograph was taken by a citizen who just happened to be there. And Jay just happened to be there and see the photo in her camera, and that photo has been all over the country and all over the world. It's quite an opportunity. So, this year, 39 stops on the map reflect collaborations with over 20 different land owners who have generously welcomed, and in some cases participated in strange and arguably impractical uses of their fields. 

[LAUGHTER] We find ourselves at a moment in time when rural places are being reconsidered, revalued. Interest in sustainable and local food systems has proven to be more than a passing fashion. Urban folks are hungry to deepen their connection to the land, and new media and technology may have all but ended isolation. Jay and I have known these things to be true at home, and our recent trip to Massachusetts demonstrated a re-enchantment to rural places nationwide. Recent economic uncertainties provide entrepreneurial opportunities not yet fully explored. The growing local food movement. The rival of DIY culture, craft brewers, farmstead cheesemakers, picklers, bakers, sausage makers abound in this part of the country where hunting and fishing and the homely arts are authentic and widely practiced. These assets raise the profile and the allure of agricultural regions as places where important work is done and where livings, in the truest sense, can be made. The vision of artists can provide critical conceptual framework to explore and revivify a timeless connection between people and the land. Fermentation Fest grew from a project launched a few years ago with the support of the Wisconsin Humanities Council and also lead out another project supported by the Gard Foundation called Home Grown Culture. 

The re-enchantment of agriculture explores the places where human imagination, experiments, and sustainability, community well-being and creative excitement all converge. This concept has come to characterize our work here in south central Wisconsin and was inspire in part by Suzi Gablik's book The Re-enchantment of Art in which she says, and this is kind of a long quote here but I think it's an important one, Suzi Gablik says, individualism, freedom, and self-expression are the great modernist buzz words. To highly individualistic artists trained to think this way, the idea that creative activity might be directed towards answering a collective cultural need, rather than a personal desire for self-expression, is likely to appear irrelevant or even presumptuous. But I believe there is a new evolving relationship between personal creativity and social responsibility. As old modernist patterns of alienation and confrontation give way to new ones of mutualism and the development of an active and practical dialog with the environment. Just as our word culture is embedded in the word agriculture, so has cultural expression itself been deeply embedded within our landscapes and our ways of deriving our livings from it. Through the re-enchantment of agriculture and the projects it has inspired, such as Fermentation Fest, we seek to reclaim and advance the ancient alliance between these seemingly disparate fields of human endeavor. We do this one growing season, one roadside stand, one installation at a time. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]  >> My name's John Pfeiffer. 

I'm a local photographer. >> What do you think of our photos? >> What? >> What do you think of our photos? >> I love them. [LAUGHTER] So much that I would like to come out and take some more photographs, but from my camera. [LAUGHTER] And what's the chance I can come out to your land and do this? >> There are maps on the desk in front. >> Okay. >> So, sure. >> Thank you.  >> Question up here.  >> I'm Barbara. I'm really overcome by this because in Cleveland I'm a market gardener, I'm an urban farmer also. 

And the pictures of the farm stands, especially with the bicycles, we've been talking about this amongst the market gardeners on the west side of Cleveland, and I really need to get some of these photos because we're talking about trying-- We sell at our neighborhood farmers market, and we're adjacent to what's called a food desert, defined by the USDA. I'm sure near Reedsburg you've got food deserts, too, of a different kind. But the issue of how do you get food to the people who need it and can't get to the market is an issue, but to do it so artistically is like an extra bonus. So, I will contact you to see if I can get some of these images. They really are stunning. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> There's actually one of the vehicles is, we're getting ready to build one on the platform of an electric cart, electric utility vehicle, thinking of an urban situation where we'd be able to move between communities much more easily than we would if you had to haul a trailer around. >> I think we have a question back here. >> Thank you. 

I went to see this last year. I was blown away. It was really wonderful. But as a Madison resident, I did have to get in my car and drive. So my question is, I'm wondering how the community of Reedsburg, whether you're attracting people such that they need housing and food, food besides what they can get at the produce stands. Whether there's an economic impact that's substantial or even taxed, taxing your resources there. >> Well, that's certainly one of our goals. Now, last year was our pilot year, so we did that with three-months notice. Once we found the Our Town grant came through, we turned that around in three months. So it was truly a pilot, and we needed to launch it to watch and see what happened and then have the time to plan for this year. 

So our goal is to bring people through 50 miles that go through four towns, the town of Reedsburg and three tiny little towns. And the idea is that the restaurants and the antique stores and the bars and the roadside stands and the... >> Hotels. >> And the hotels and the B&Bs will benefit. And we promote this, of course, because we are on our urban/rural continuum, and as former city folks, we understand how powerful that drive in the country can be and especially because of the local food movement and kind of the sexiness of it now. If you can get the people that are already interested, urban people who are already interested in supporting local farmers to take that drive, it can only deepen their connection and the rural residents and the farmers will benefit. So the idea is for it to be a rural economic development benefit for the people in the Reedsburg area but also for the urban people that take the trip that will cement that relationship with where the food comes from. >> Question over here. >> Thanks. Hi. 

Something I found really pleasing is the aesthetic range of the art that you've shown images of, and the implication of it is that an abstract sculpture in the middle of a field or work like Dr. Evermor's can be as much a response to a landscape and a community as a landscape painting or folk music or something that would normally have the appearance of being more indigenous and so forth can have. And I'm wondering if you can say something more about that? The role that, for example, the strange plays in this kind of... >> Strange? The role of the strange. [LAUGHTER] >> The role of the strange in responding to particular spaces and communities. >> Well, we talk about it punctuating, the artwork punctuating the landscape. So we think that kind of juxtaposition and the surprise of it all is exactly what we're after, and yet, we want this to be a very democratic process. We have, on our map you'll see art installations that are identified as art installations, and those are professional artists, artists who identify themselves as artists and are commissioned. And then we have something called farm forms, and that's creative people who have made things. They don't necessarily call themselves artists, and those are often the farmers on whose land the thing is placed. And sometimes they'll collaborate. 

The big monarch caterpillar, that was the farmer. He and his son painted the silage bag themselves. It was totally their idea. They didn't have to clear it with a committee. They just did whatever they wanted, and that's exactly what we wanted to have happen. >> It completely bypasses a jury process. [LAUGHTER] They've actually got something going this year that's going to blow that away too. [LAUGHTER] >> Donna and Jay, I'm wondering if you could take the demographics that Mitch talked about and tell us a story of how a different generation or a different ethnic group has come together through some of this creative placemaking that you've been doing? >> Well, it's interesting because I know those statistics are true, that the rural areas are emptying out, but it's just not been our experience. We're finding more and more people interested in possibly relocating. We were talking to all these artists we met in Massachusetts and it's all about cheap rent, lots of space, making noise, making bonfires, all the things that people used to do in the city when they moved to one fancy neighborhood to a crummier neighborhood where you could spread out and make art and make music and it sort of like the logical progression to be able to sort of reinvent the space. 

And I think of it as like the Tabula Verde, that there is room for all kinds of wonderful things to happen in rural areas. And, of course, being in proximity to urban areas is critical. And that's, I think, why it can work here because we're in proximity to three major metropolitan areas, all who eat. [LAUGHTER] >> And I just want to add that the stats that we get with why the migration is happening is because of lack of jobs, and I think that artists and creatives can take the reverse and come to rural communities exactly for cheaper rent, for a slower paced kind of living. Another Our Town and ArtPlace grant recipient is in Ajo, Arizona, population of 4,000 people, but they took the old school in town and built it into artists lofts where an artist can come and pay 300 bucks a month and have artist studios. So for them, it's great to have that space and then be able to get to the Phoenix and Tucson region. So I think that, for artists, it's sort of the reverse. They are able to create their work in these rural communities versus a factory worker, etc, that needs that factory in the community. >> I think another aspect of the demographic shift is the browning of Reedsburg. When we moved there, diversity meant having both Methodist and Lutherans at the same time. 

[LAUGHTER] But there are now two Mexican grocery stores, families pushing strollers up and down the street. >> He's not the only Salinas anymore. >> No, right. I made a deposit at my bank and they put it in the wrong account, because they just assumed that there was only, how many Salinas deposit? [LAUGHTER] Until I got this back and said this Salinas is doing much better than I am. [LAUGHTER] But our efforts to reach out to the Hispanic community, though, have been, they're still at their formative stages. And I think it's a tremendous opportunity for these small towns to have that to celebrate and to maybe, the word is not exploit, but that cultural diversity because I think it can really be, I've been in small towns in Wisconsin that are now about half Somali Bantu and it's had a really beneficial effect on the community. It livened the culture, the economics of the community, and it's actually working fairly well. Of course, we have a tremendous and well-defined Hmong population here, still mostly in urban centers but beginning to move out, and a really powerful farming community, farming traditions that I'm really excited to have the opportunity to work with.  >> This is just beautiful. This really touches a real deep spiritual place, what you're doing. 

Thank you. The stereotype image of rural small town America is conservatism, and I'm just curious what kind of response you've had from the farmers from the towns that have been affected by this? >> Well, I think the toiling in obscurity for a long time, we've been doing things, and they've been small and easy to ignore, but we've been around, and we've been around for 18 years. >> 20 years. >> So, we've made friends over time, and I can't say that our proximate community has embraced us. I think we're misfits, probably always will be, but we're having a good time. [LAUGHTER] Every time we do something, we meet another person who thinks it's cool. So it's good. >> They haven't embraced us, but we do get an occasional pat on the back. >> Occasionally. >> One of the things that, certainly the sustainable agriculture movement is that it's nonpartisan. 

It's about individualism. It's about making your own way in the world. Self-reliance. And I think that goes a long way too. >> We get a lot of field cred too because we're not dilettante city people. At least, we don't look like them. Jay's out there working every day, and so it think there's a certain amount of credibility we have with the farming community. And the DTour, frankly, has been the most wonderful surprise we ever could have had because we had to approach, last year we had 27 stops along the tour, over 20 landowners. After we did this, this experiment, we polled them and 100% of them said that they would do it again. So, that was amazing because we tried to explain what we thought might happen, and it was difficult to do. 

That can be easy. We'll put a sign that says land. But the installation work, it's very difficult to explain. We did have a couple of early adopters, and I think the fact that we had those people committed, other people are easier. >> If Larry's going to do it, I guess it can't be too crazy. [LAUGHTER] >> Yeah, it was remarkable how accepting everyone was. >> One of my favorite experiences last year is the, coming up this Thursday there's a kick-off event prior to actually opening the DTour, last year it was the first time bringing these landowners, artists, they might have passed each other along the road, but they were in the same room together, sharing a tasty snack and a cold beverage. >> Fermented beverage. [LAUGHTER] >> The level of understanding and mutual respect in that place, it was, I'm going to start tearing up in a second too, because it was really, really beautiful. The artists, they're sort of, I don't know, tatted up and facial piercings and crazy hair, and we've got suspenders and belt farmers, and they're having a meaningful conversation. 

And that's like, it doesn't matter what happens from this point. >> Well, it was collaboration of sorts.  >> My name's John Peterson, and I am a lifelong farmer. >> Hi, John. >> How you doing? And I'm very fascinated with your undertakings, your initiatives. I've tried things like this. I'm from north central Illinois, a farm called Angelic Organics, a CSA farm. [APPLAUSE] >> The CSA farm. >> We wouldn't be doing this if it hadn't been for him. >> Somebody sent us the article in The Reader about your farm, and that's what got us started. 

[APPLAUSE]  >> But I don't know if we've been too subversive. I don't know. >> It's the feather boa. >> What? The boa? But we've really encountered a lot of obstacles with our initiatives on our farm, our social and cultural initiatives. So I'm sitting here going, how did they do that? Because, I'm just going to give you an example, we had a break-in on our farm, so the police came to investigate. This is very recently. And I said, you know, you should really see us packing vegetables because every day you go out and you encounter crime and all these problems, these social crises, I said I want to show you something good. So I showed the policemen the crew packing vegetables, and then the next day when they came back to investigate, the detectives, they said, "Is this place a cult?" [AUDIENCE REACTS] And then a few hours later, another detective got out of the car and within five or six minutes he said, "Are you a cult? I just need to know if you're a cult." I mean, we were the ones who were burglarized. They weren't supposed to be suspicious. >> We get that. 

>> So this is what I wonder, and I've been on that farm my whole life and you guys have been on your farm 20 years. >> The day before yesterday. >> But I'm just wondering how you really do this or if you're, don't people come into your yard and scream at you sometimes? [LAUGHTER] People come into our yard and scream devil worship. >> We heard things like that early on. Those have kind of disappeared. I don't know why. >> Well, there was the recent one, "Worm Farm, that's that halfway house out there, isn't it?" Yeah, that's right, exactly. >> But cult, we used to get that a lot. >> Yeah, yeah. >> We burn goats every fall. 

[LAUGHTER] Effigy. >> Not real goats. >> So did you all have to, early on, and I think it's great you've been around for 20 years and the whole creative placemaking you would think that worm farm in the literature started two years ago in the arts world. And it's amazing that with some of the larger dollars of grants it's been able to get put on the map. But can you talk about two things. One is your business model and the other is... [LAUGHTER] Well, because there's a perception out there that we're talking six digit grants now. >> Shh. >> We received $100,000 from ArtPlace. And it funded part of the pilot and this year. 

So we're getting two years out of that. >> There are some folks who think you get these grants and you're on easy street when, in fact, it just helps that year and not forward. >> Right. And actually that is a huge challenge for us now because basically what we have to do, last year and this year, is prove that this is even doable. So we're still very much in R&D and we're experimenting and we're evaluating. Sarah, our board member back there, has got an evaluation plan in her purse, and what we have to do is, and we think it's good for us, we think we have four years to make this be sustainable. So we have to have funding, solid funding, for four years to have this be a self-sustaining project that can benefit the entire region, which we absolutely think it can, and there are models, business models, of ones that are comparable. There's one in Virginia called the Crooked Road, and it is a $24 million economic impact project that's been going on for, I don't know, 15 years or so. Built very, very slowly and it's based on Roots music. It's a drive around and this is where this film is made and this is where this guy was born and various things are on the tour. 

And they started out temporary but have become permanent. So there are ways to take the assets, the assets you have, amplify and ignite them with the arts, and then, of course, the businesses come in and then there's even more reason to come. And it's been interesting to have conversations with the creative placemaking folks, with Carol Coletta and others, about this. And on the heels of Richard Florida's work where there's so much criticism, and justifiably, about, basically, developers following artists into neighborhoods and then the artists getting kicked out. So how is creative placemaking different from that? And so in some of these conversations, they're talking about all those issues that are in urban areas about how you gentrify or how you improve and it turns into gentrification, but in rural areas there's very little downside because there's so many vacant storefronts and there's so many abandoned warehouses that it's going to be decades before there's a downside. So we are at, again, this rare moment in time where we have the assets, we have the major metropolitan areas around us, we have the agricultural identity, and we have this new interest in local food and we have artists. And if you can wrap all those things together, do it for four years so you've got the plan down and you've got your budget straight, then sponsors are there because you've got the people and you've got the arts, you've got farming and you've got health and you've got bicycling, you have all kinds of complementary businesses that can help support it. >> She should run for president. She didn't answer the question. [LAUGHTER] She didn't answer the question about our business model at all. 

[LAUGHTER] I just want you to know that. [LAUGHTER] >> Keep us alive for four years, we'll figure it out. >> We'll have an answer for you then. [LAUGHTER] I'll get back to you on that. >> We'll look at your final report. >> There you go.  >> Hi. My name is Elise. I just moved here. This is awesome. 

>> Thank you. >> My question is a little bit different. I'm one of those extremely fun millennials, so I love what you guys are doing. [LAUGHTER] All about placemaking, all about new forms of art, but I'm wondering if you guys think there's a place in creative placemaking for the more traditional forms of art? What do we do with operas and ballets and things that don't look like weird farm animals? [LAUGHTER] >> Field opera would be fabulous. >> I will say that moving into a new role on Monday at Chorus America, at the board meeting I was just at with them, there is a riff with the discipline specific organizations because these funders have really been focusing on the physical built sense of a community and how does choruses, we know there's 270,000 choruses in America, how do they, we know that singing really helps health and vitality. So, there is this movement about how these traditional art forms fit in. What's interesting is the NEA, who does the Our Town grants, has not yet received a final report yet from these Our Town grants to figure out if these models are working to be able to talk about the other art forms. And what I would say is that we need to be having the traditional and the nontraditional and the in-the-middle start working together on projects of having those traditional art forms in these kinds of settings and even in urban forms, especially as we're learning about those nontraditional theater goers. One of the great things that I love in Washington, DC, is when we have Opera in the Outfield where I can go to the Mets stadium, get my hot dog and my beer, sit in the chair, and watch opera on the big screen. [LAUGHTER] So we're having to find different ways to infuse those traditional art forms with this nontraditional sense, but with creative placemaking, as it is now, there is no definite outcomes on how this is working except for the stories that people can share. 

So there will be an influence, especially at the endowment or with ArtPlace, about how those art forms get themselves into those places but having to think creatively to get into those placemaking opportunities. >> Vibrancy indicators. >> Vibrancy indicators, yes. >> What does that mean? [LAUGHTER] >> Snazzy words. >> I don't have a question. I just wanted to thank you because we discovered Worm Farm work quite a few years ago through Buck Fest and your cards and your presentation at Buck Fest. And we hurried and went to Reedsburg. We discovered Reedsburg, and I now have a painting, the first one I bought in my life. >> I remember that. >> Which I look at every day and I see the bales of hay and it's just wonderful. 

So you have to go to Reedsburg. [LAUGHTER] >> Thank you. >> And I think one of the sad things I find here is that Madison is a wonderful place, but they don't push enough what's outside of Madison. So, there needs to be a little more of that. Instead of bringing people to Madison all the time, which you do, we need to get people out there. >> Yes, you do. >> There's Reedsburg. There's Mineral Point which is fabulous too, and a lot of people have no clue. And Wisconsin has all these wonderful little real towns, as I call them. Not the Dells but real towns that have wonderful things. 

So, thank you for what you do. >> Thank you. >> Our pleasure.  >> Wonderfully inspiring. I just wondered if you had any thoughts for rural communities that aren't farm-based. And I think some of them are struggling rural communities are those that are sort of the survivor towns of the extraction industries, whether it was logging or mining. And there's something wonderful about growing living things, but in communities that are trying to rebuild their identity, any thoughts about, whether it's the mining towns or the logged over forests, any thoughts there or is that a whole different strategy? >> Well, it's not necessarily asset-based, so you might have, but no. [LAUGHTER] I don't. >> Go ahead. >> I just want to say that, especially when I was Arizona, I was with the State Arts Commission there, and we would have a lot of rural communities who, industry left, mining closed down, and they were trying to make their products that were not authentic. 

And if you went, if you saw some sort of flier and you went and you saw some junk, you aren't going to return. So I think for any community, whether you have assets or not, make the experiences authentic because that is what's going to drive people to come back. And I think that that's really key for anyone trying this work is authentic experiences are what's going to bring people to your community. >> I have a quick question What's your from the hip response to people who think of art as a luxury? You've got a struggling economy region and you guys are doing art. Isn't that a luxury? >> Foolishness. >> Yes. [LAUGHTER] So what, right off the cuff, what is your response? Each of you can give me your quick response. It's some nice ammunition, I think, for a lot of people to have going into battle in the rural parts of the state. >> Well, I think what we need is more imagination, and especially at critical times when the economy is floundering. What do you need? You don't need a job. 

You need the ability to imagine a place for yourself. And so if you can imagine it, then you can, perhaps, do it. So I think the arts are not a luxury. They're a vital necessity. And I think one of the things we do with this that we don't say because we want people to get it themselves is that if we, and this is not necessarily thought of, but we use hay fields as stages or as places for sculpture. So if you can see a hay field differently and you can say to yourself, I never would have thought of that, then you can transfer that to another part of your life. But I think that that really does happen to people. I think it opens people's eyes. Art has the power to do that. >> I've got two answers, I guess. 

One is the sort of cynical one that I've used, myself, before, and that's sort of when all else fails, you throw art at it. There's been struggling industrial towns that are going under, so let's put up an opera house or something like that. And I'm not sure that, I mean, about that strategy, but the idea, I think, as Donna said, has some validity. The other one is a more personal one and more nuanced, and it's, yeah, it's foolishness. So what? I think we need, I've always tried to, I don't want to get too esoteric here, controlled folly. I'm going to lay it on the line. We're all going to die someday, right? All of our hopes and dreams and aspirations will go with us. So, we believe things are important, we should act as if they're important, and art can be one of those things that we just decide that it's important and we're going to devote ourselves to it even though we're all going to die. [LAUGHTER] Does that help? [LAUGHTER] >> So, coming from Americans for the Arts, I can tell you there's case-making that can be done. Yes, we're a $150 billion nonprofit arts industry in America, but, with that, I think that to make the case, anybody needs to know the facts. 

They need to know who that opposition is and where they're coming from. Now, moving to Chorus America, we have an advocacy platform which is to keep choruses in schools, and I said, well, what about the big national arts advocacy thing? And they have found through research that out of the 270,000 choruses, about 9% receive federal or public funding for the arts. So the case to save the NEA and state and local, they think it's important for the infrastructure, but they're not getting that direct dollar. So we wouldn't use that case-making with the local authorizer if we're talking about case-making. So I think you just have to know audiences, you have to know facts, but the one thing I will say, and Ann Katz in the back of the room will probably agree to this, don't advocate only in crisis. Advocate when things are good, when things are indifferent. Always make sure that you have the right facts, that you're educating authorizers. And advocacy is not lobbying. You can advocate. You can do decision- or education-maker education. 

You can do all of that stuff and just know the right facts, and if you're not sure, there are resources to lean on, because if you get facts wrong, that's what they will remember. So, always just make sure that when you're doing that case-making, get the facts right and do it often and not just in crisis. >> That's good. Better than we're all going to die. >> Or tell them that they're going to die soon. [LAUGHTER] You didn't hear that. [LAUGHTER]  >> Everyone's pointing to each other. >> I'm out of here. >> When you talked about this new form of art of working, I guess, in these rural places, what does that mean exactly? Like, what are we looking for for them to be working? I think earlier we sort of referenced, yeah. >> Mitch. 

>> Yes, Mitch. >> Whew. [LAUGHTER] >> Sorry. There was a question down there about having the more traditional forms of art and how does that fit in here, and I think you said something about when you get the final reports back. >> Oh. So, Our Town is a grant program that was created by the National Endowment for the Arts, and they have different objectives for the grant as it illuminates to the animating, rejuvenating, improving communities. So they asked a series of questions that applicants are going after to try to win this money, and there's only, I think, maybe 20 to 30 grants that are given out of an applicant pool of like 200. But they don't actually know, from what the applicant says that they're going to do, they don't know if that's truly going to happen because the applicant hasn't even turned in a final report yet to say this was our hypothesis on our project, but they don't know yet what actually happened with the actual grant. And it's sort of an interesting point because it's a new program, and for them to move forward with either changing guidelines or changing questions or thinking about the discipline specific organizations, they can't because they don't have the research yet on the current grants that they'd given out. So when we talk about these vibrancy indicators with ArtPlace, how do we know that those vibrancy indicators really matter? They don't know. 

>> We're all guinea pigs. We're in the first round, and we're guinea pigs. And so they were testing theories out on us, and I guess when the reports come in, then they'll probably retool. There is a big conference in Florida in January for the ArtPlace recipients, and I think that's mainly what it's going to be is what are we doing and how are we going to measure it? So we're still at the ground floor of this, which is an interesting place to be.  >> I want to thank-- You want to make one final comment?  >> Maybe bringing it full circle and asking Mitch, why do you want to go back to Casa Grande? [LAUGHTER] One of the, your folks are there now. They won't always be. What draws you back? You've left. You've had an important life doing important things, national organizations, why go home? Or is it home? >> It is still home, and I can't explain, I've shown pictures of my hometown, which the chamber of commerce does a nice job with photos. [LAUGHTER] But I get a sense of grounding and of where I come from when I return. And I go about four to five times a year, which I don't actually know this Christmas, I have friends who went to Spain for $800 last Christmas. 

It was $675 for me to fly to Arizona. [LAUGHTER] But I just know that it's the place that I will return to, because my family has lived there, moved, come back, and it's just sort of the cycle. And actually, in three weeks I will head back to actually buy that piece of desert property so that I can have it so when I do return I can put my fabulous modern prefab home on it. [LAUGHTER] So I just know that that's where I'm supposed to go back to, and it's interesting because I have had this fabulous life and I see my parents and my family and I get a sense of emotion when I see things on Facebook about things that are happening at home that I'm not part of. So I do feel that it is my responsibility to return and also that it's just where I'm grounded. >> It is my sad responsibility to bring us to a close. [LAUGHTER] I just want to thank our inspiring speakers. I think you've left us all energized. [APPLAUSE]