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Two people at the Oklahoma Arts Council conference mentioned their support message groups. This is such a simple idea I wanted to share it with you. Alena Jennings said people call her The Doodle Lady because she runs The Doodle Academy, an art experience education business in downtown Ponca City. Alena has connected with several…
You’d like to do more for your small town or rural community, but you’re held back by at least a couple of things: You don’t actually need either of those. Small steps can be meaningful and usually don’t require permission. That’s why Deb and I say: 99% of the best things you can do for…
It’s the holiday season, so I wanted to share something short and still useful. I found these quotes from former Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, from when he spoke to the very rural Red Carpet County Tourism Association in Alva, Oklahoma. I picked these because you can adapt them for your community, no matter what…
Lack of childcare is one of the top challenges in rural communities, on our Survey of Rural Challenges. Lately, I’ve heard several innovative successes you might be able to adapt for your community. 1. Senior Care + Childcare = Intergenerational Care In Laverne, Oklahoma, (population 1,200) Lana Shaffer shared how locals came together several years…
Last year during entrepreneurship week, I saw lots of articles about what big cities can do to support entrepreneurship. Advice for small towns got left out. Again. So I wrote this entrepreneur week advice for small town economic developers and chambers of commerce, whether you serve 5,000 or 500 in your local population. 1. Create…
Caldwell, Kansas, has a population of about 1000 people. The city has taken an active role in improving the condition and availability of housing in their town. That’s a LOT for a town of 1,000 people! But the city is not the only group interested in housing. When I visited the town, we made a…
At the Teeny Tiny Town Summit last week, JaNae Barnard from Fairview, Oklahoma, shared how they jump started their new housing project. “We stopped settling for talking,” she said. She loaded up the key folks from Major County Economic Development, and they drove past every single house in Fairview. That gave everyone a much clearer…
You’ve probably noticed, but housing is a top challenge in most rural communities and small towns. That makes it hard to remember that back around 2013, cheap housing was a key draw of new residents to rural places, according to Ben Winchester from University of Minnesota and others. But by 2019, lack of housing was…
The other day, I told you about how the kids’ Photovoice project stopped me in my tracks and why we made a video for those kids. Today, I want to share one of the photo ideas the kids made and what Deb Brown and I said to those kids. It’s also part of the video…
At the Rural Renewal Symposium last year, I was stopped in my tracks by a research poster presentation by Rural Scholar Stephanie Harvey on a youth photovoice project. Why did it strike me? It featured photos taken by kids ages 7 to 17 about what they wanted in their towns. I think you’d recognize their…
When we were talking about finding more volunteers in a virtual session with Radically Rural, some people brought up liability as a barrier to all kinds of volunteer projects and events. I get why this came up. Somebody in your town probably brought up liability when you shared an idea, too. “You want to let…
It’s not just you. Every small town struggles to find enough volunteers to do all the projects and events and ideas. Cassandra Boniface with the Township of Stirling-Rawdon, Ontario, told us how they flipped the volunteer recruiting process. “We created the Active Community Expo (A.C.E.). It’s held at our local arena, and is essentially a…
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