 I'm trying to think of a word to describe movement that is both beautiful and awkward. Myself included in that last night. We built... Change your mind! I swear, like, I always have an appetite at someone and I apologize. But love and trust and how those two lead us to collaborate and, you know, lead us towards where we ended yesterday. Real talk. Real talk that really needs to continue. I'm grateful for all of those in the room. I want us again to give our deepest, deepest thanks to Alex and his work yesterday at the Moose Lodge. We closed with an absolutely essential conversation in the last plenary. And we moved into an equally essential performance by Mary Swander. And I want to give our deep thanks to Mary as well. The continuum of the cultural and the structural and economic conversation we need to have and that so much of our work is raising up, I think, was narrated really powerfully between what happened in the last two hours and our time together yesterday. I want to make, again, in thinking about the rural cultural condition we're in and the precarious moment that we all seem to feel that we're in. I want to sort of really celebrate something that is really important about rural communities. And I feel it is really different about the experience of our brothers and sisters in urban America. It's easy to be in a, like, a padded room of narratives, especially in the last eight months. Depending on where you get your news, your vision of the world is different. I want to celebrate the folks that are in the room and celebrate our communities because while all that is true, as you all know, we all got to go to the same grocery store. And I think so much of the vision that we heard yesterday were not only a passion, but there was so much common value there. We negotiate these things every day in our small communities, our medium-sized communities and our urban communities. And it happens in the Red Isle. And we're accountable to folks in those communities in the Red Isle as well. That just really powerfully came to me yesterday. I've been hearing and having the chance to be in the room with you all. In a moment, I want to introduce Chuck Lugardi, who has the deep honor of being my father. As you all know, he's the founder and CEO of Rupert. What I would like to leave us with as this former bridge is, as I look out to the folks in the room and the folks that I've had to know and I've had the honor of knowing in the nearly six years that our role has been around, in those six and seven years, we've seen a lot of projects. There are a lot of folks who have done powerful projects who are no longer doing them. I know there are folks in this room, there are folks around the field whose projects we celebrate who may no longer be doing those in here in six months, in two years. I think we really, before we have the conversation that we're going to have today, we really need to hold that. There is immense, immense promise in this field and in this space that we are creating together. And, you know, these tough negotiations between sectors and between fields, there's a lot of promise there. There's also intense fragility. And we really have to fill that and honor that. And I feel so deeply honored to be with you all, because every day we work through that world of communities across the sectors that we're in. With that, I'd like to pass the mic here to my dad, Chuck. I'm thinking. I'd just like to say my wife, Marsha, who's back here tonight, are very, very proud of how this gentleman overcame his early parenting. Raised by wolves. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Real people. Yesterday was really amazing to me. It was energizing. It was challenging. It was uplifting. It was tiring. But a ball call from me personally, it was validating of all that are to the rural and root breed, believe could happen and risk to have happened in terms of organizational, personal and financial costs. So, again, I want to reiterate what Matt said. We're so deeply grateful that you came to this today. I'd just like for us as a community to thank our presenters, our moderators, our performers, the people that grew, prepared and served our food, the wonderful weight staff and staff that Molly has in this beautiful venue. Let's express our sincere appreciation. Remember, Grandma said, give thanks a lot of the time and mean it. Let's express appreciation. Please, if they would. And if Sean Starwoods is in the room, I'd like for Sean to stand up. I don't know if Sean's still here. Sean, Bloomington, Indiana now has a great young arts leader. And Sean, I just know these folks have worked tirelessly for six months on this. So I want you to thank Savannah and Teresa and Jocelyn and Cleo and Peabar and Bryson who couldn't be here and Sean Starwoods who helped get it all started. Let's express appreciation for Gears a bit intentionally. And the past two days have been about Matt's first two issues, how we build communication in the sector and how we lift up wonderful promising models. We're going to turn our attention now to the question of how we build support structures for all of us. Part of you is how we build a future for this movement. I believe what you are is a national movement. Now, speaking of support, if you look in your program and again thank the partners for this summit, all of them made this happen. Please, when you have a chance, thank all of those wonderful organizations. We could not have done this without all of them. A couple comments from a Rupert standpoint that I think are instructive. Primacy in place has been central to Rupert's work over three decades in a lot of sectors. And in every sector we worked to articulate and lift up a world differential. It has been driven by efforts to assure the mainline sectors, legislative, regulatory, and advocacy communities, along with their private philanthropic funders, appreciate the unique challenges imposed by distance and lack of scale, capacity, and technical assistance for rural practitioners. In every sector that's the issue for rural. Now, when it's all said and done, it's mostly about quality, access, and equity. And we mentioned that yesterday. It's informational equity. It's programmatic equity. It is, in fact, financial equity. At some point in the journey to relevance in that sector, rural advocates determine in every sector they have to create a standalone, rural-focused, intermediary organization to share innovative ideas and models, communicate and build an advocacy community, innovate programs, and support structure development. In every case in which we work with these sectors over time, the mainline sector eventually strongly supports the rural sector because it adds value to the overall mainline structure work. This has occurred in rural health, human services, community colleges, housing, county government, transportation, entrepreneurship, community economic development, telecommunications education, regional universities, and many others. This backbone has not yet been built in rural arts and culture. And it needs to be. I'd like now to thank the third person beside the dean and the provost who made this possible. And this is all about people. We were hoping Secretary Vilsack could keynote this event. And until a couple days ago, he was going to start dimming the lights now, if you would. I'm not fading away. We're going to do the tech thing here. Don't start to get them. I was honored last week with many folks in this room to be at the White House Rural Summit at Penn State talking about rural quality of life. In your packet is a history of what the White House Rural Council has done in this administration. For 30 years in public policy, rubry work to give place primacy in federal policy, this administration has enveloped that and built it. So, Tom Vilsack chaired that council and we really wish he could have been here today. Because in my humble opinion, he is the finest servant leader rural America has ever had in an appointed public office in our government. Three points. He cares about agriculture but he cares about all of agriculture. He cares about rural development but he cares about all of its forms and he cares about arts and culture. I'm now honored, wishing indeed he could be here but you know the more I thought about it, I went through the seven stages of grief on this agriculture. First I was angry as hell. God, we've worked with you forever, can't you come? This is like a 25th year celebration for Rupert because we had our 25th. Airmarks had gone away and we were going away and we're still here and come and celebrate. Then I got hurt. Then I got accepted and then I realized how damn stupid I have been. He is working today to assure that the future of our nation is secure. So I present to you now the Secretary of Agriculture with a message to you all. Tom Vilsack. Hello, I'm agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack. Thank you to Rupert, the University of Iowa, the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Delta Regional Authority for making this possible. USDA is happy to join with these groups to support this summit including through the partnership of a number of our state directors. Last week at the White House Rural Forum we convened a discussion about the future of rural America. We had pounds and roundtables featuring topics such as economic drivers and rural places, the future of rural regions and the rural young leaders making a difference section. Chuck Flaherty was there and he was witness to one of the themes that emerged, the need to lift up the cultural assets of rural places so people and particularly young families want to call small towns and rural communities their home. The mayor of Wolf who previously served as an economic development director talked about his experience meeting with high school students each year. He'd asked them what would make them want to come back home after college and it became clear to him that the community needed things for young people to be a part of and to enjoy it. Whitney Kimball Cole, the Athens, Tennessee leader from the National Rural Assembly talked about how one of the assets of her small town supports regular and weekly engagement of the local community with local artists and I had a chance to talk about how over the course of this administration the White House Rural Council and USDA have taken a new approach to rural development to engage and support rural communities in growing their economies and improving quality of life. For more and more communities this means creating art and celebrating their artists. It means building places and connecting their traditions and looking forward to their future. The conference today is a very important step while USDA and the National Endowment for the Arts and other federal partners have helped create public spaces, community centers and infrastructure the real essential ingredient of great places is the people. People like you at this summit who have committed your time and talents to the future of your community. I want to thank you for this work because rural America is important not only to the people who live there but to the very fabric of this nation. So I also want to thank you and I want to challenge you to continue to work together so that everyone in rural places has a chance to reach their potential. I guess we work to get him to be Secretary of Agriculture in the next 15 administrations. I'd like to ask the panel to not be seated now if you would. You know everything today is a reflection of what started yesterday and it's really about people and I'm so honored today to have a set of very dear friends who quite frankly in their some represent the people that really have made placemaking work and that will sustain it naturally. Now this is a definite division from yesterday and let me just introduce these folks briefly many of you know them already but first of all Chris Massengale who's Federal Co-Chair of the Delta Regional Authority Linda Langston who is Director of Strategic Relations with the National Association of Counties Doug O'Brien who actually was central to the development frankly the White House Rural Council within the Domestic Policy Council of the United States let me say that again the Rural Development Future of this administration was led by a Rural Council in the Domestic Policy Council of our nation in my wildest dreams I never thought I would ever utter those words in this nation Next is Earl Gould very dear friend of us all Federal Co-Chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission Jamie Bennett who you all know Executive Director of Artplace and just Jason Shupock who directs design programs for NEA Here's the plan for the morning we're going to have a dialogue and this is going to be very free for us at that point like, Teresa is going to come up here and we're going to engage all of you with these leaders for two hours we don't need to rush we have time then we'll have a box lunch and we hope these Rural tables and these flip charts let us have functions that you'd like to stay together to work on in this year so we're very very grateful for these national leaders this talk was a softball question that these folks would take it to any way because they're all pretty good two questions and let's just start to get down the line if it's okay Chris we'll just go this way that's wonderful so let's just talk about place making where you are the role that both Rural and Arts and Culture have been in your work and then the guideposts for the future how are we going to go forward together in a federal, state, NGO partnership to sustain this amazing growing infrastructure Chris, go ahead, five to six minutes on just where you are let me start by saying I have a technician or is it working truck? good morning there's an opportunity to partner with you your work at Brubri stands the test of all kinds of dynamics in your business and your leadership and vision for this has truly been amazing particularly for folks like me let me confess a couple of things to you which helps you kind of have a little bit of context how I come to the table is very much a traditional economic development I spent most of my adult career going after smoke stacks going after the big else in economic development that's how I was trained that's how I got into government and politics was trying to help close deals and so the good thing was though is that if you all won't tell anybody I happen to be a theater geek and I realized I couldn't make a living like I wanted to so I had to think about a couple other things and then I got attracted to government and policy making and realized the kind of impact that we can have on things that we care about like the arts and culture the things that we know make a great community make us who we are as a people something we believe in pretty strongly and then fast forward so here I am at the Delta Reach Memorial an economic development entity an independent federal agency that tries to be a leverage to help create job field communities and improve lives that's what we do every day and I am a firm believer after kind of a history in economic development to try to change the conversation a little bit particularly at the local level and with practicing economic development because this is sometimes a difficult conversation to have particularly in some of our places that we represent DRA is H-Dates 252 counties and parishes almost 10 million people and one of the most historic iconic cultural places in the country when you look at the impact on music, food that's right, in the world you're absolutely right that places like Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, the city Kentucky and all of these cool incredible places and when you look at some of the things that they've been trying to do this is actually fairly recent if you look at the historic and iconic place where we are housed, where our office is in Clarksdale, Mississippi Cahoma County in the heart of the Mississippi Delta region population of about 12,000 in the city may have 16,000 in the county so it was the place of Mike Waters, Robert Johnson Crossroads a blue sky like me you get to go to work every day in one of the most sacred places of blues it was really not until 1995 that they actually started to try to do some real what we would consider now that quality of place they were so focused for so long on the agricultural base of their economy trying to increase the industrial recruitment which is important, please don't misunderstand me and actually one of the points that I want to make to this audience of such incredible people you all make this stuff happen every day you're bringing this mindset to the table in some real ways but what is interesting when I think about this is that when I think about the challenges and the opportunities I have to first think about when we're dealing with the kind of challenges in our part of the world we have to be very disciplined diligent and purposeful about making sure that we're talking about community and economic development we are having specific conversations about creative place making now now we can define it, we can talk about it we can actually have real examples of how we're doing this in Clarksdale I mentioned the biggest thing that they did for three decades was the build something called the Delta Museum that's all that they had until almost 2000's and then all of a sudden you started to see other great studios, arts and residence programs, other local place based pieces but even today right now they have an internal conflict in the community because the community is extremely divided because a lot of the conversations are not inclusive you've got a whole segment of the population is being left behind economically the issues of educational attainment we're dealing with a 100 year old infrastructure we've got places that do not even have clean running water so when we have conversations about how we're addressing these ideas we have to be extremely aware that when we're talking about making investments in arts we're not doing that in a vacuum we're not doing it in place of making investments in infrastructure and doing industrial recruitment and Chuck you've reminded us this 100 times and even publications that you have produced it's not either or this is open and you've got to be able to really show people how you can do that and the impact and the effectiveness that it will have on creating jobs building communities and improving lives operations and partnerships but the other thing that is really resonated with me in this post at the DRA is that you truly have to have resources you've got to have the investments and what we've tried to do is to be that first in or the bridge or to come in behind and go you know what we're going to invest in this cultural project and this tourism project this arts and culture whatever it happened to be tagged at the time because it shows that you have policy makers communicating the local elected officials and local leaders that this type of project is important that its impact on increasing your local tax base is significant the impact that it has on growing your own identity the impact that it has for your young people to be successful there are direct links to these types of projects let me give you another quick example Alberta, Arkansas South Arkansas Union County they are doing something that I think will probably be a model for us in this business that we really take a look at now they've got a couple of advantages that not every community has they have an industrial base and community leaders that saw the vision for incorporating arts and culture into their economic development structure every community can identify their assets every community can identify a local champion and that local champion has political influence they can bring other people to the table but picture this this is a community of about 17,000 they have launched what they call the elder of arts festival initiative basically building on the national trust award they got in the early 90's for their downtown some of you may be familiar with Alberta, Arkansas and what they were doing in their downtown square it's about eight blocks well let's fast forward they saw because here's the most incredible thing about this story they were trying to recruit corporate executives to a couple of big companies one of them called Merlin Bull we knew you all made it perfect they're tied to Walmart if you get gas at Walmart you're buying their gas and real quickly now keep me on track on time you're over 15 minutes Chris there's so many dynamics in this one question but what's so amazing is that I was just there and what is so amazing about this is that they recognized even a community like that that had some initial seed money but they're still dealing with the same very similar problems regardless of where you are one obtaining talent being able to recruit talent and also show to corporate America that this is a place worth investing in a 75 million dollar initiative a 3,000 seat venue with the rehabilitation of the Rialto theater a 7,000 outdoor amphitheater a children's play space a farm to table restaurant connected in the middle of this district they have raised over 60 million all but 3 million was raised within the community and within Arkansas for a 75 million dollar arts and cultural project because they had a serious issue of losing millennials trying to recruit corporate executives to come to rural America and they hired some pretty hot shot destination consultants and went through a series of these strategic plans but the one thing I'll say about that real quickly is that back to my point of inclusion the entire community and in fact the whole region in south Arkansas was brought into that discussion and what did the people want to see in that project all different strikes all different parts of politics from all kinds of demographics and in fact that's how they got the children's play space put into this 75 million dollar project because the community said we need something like that because they wanted this place to be a destination they wanted to be able to use this to increase an economic base to retain and recruit the national talent now not every community can raise 75 million but usually one thing that I've learned in this process is that we do not do a very good job in a lot of my places in my footprint of identifying what those local assets are one of the significant examples of that how they've done a good job with it is the blues trail in Mississippi because it gave the ability to leverage these local communities identifying this particular piece and they could leverage on the state's efforts to connect all of these things together and that's what we've seen over the last six seven eight years a major pop up some real organized network building infrastructure building to create this I mean in Mississippi alone six billion dollars of economic impact is tourism now it's not just tourism alone part of this is about trying to be attractive but at the same time as my last comment he's a friend thank god is also trying to work to raise the cultural awareness of your own citizens at the same time so anyway I'm glad to be here so for folks in the room who don't know me I am an Iowa but I tell people I come by my schizophrenia honestly so my mom was from Mason City Iowa River City Music Band Town but because she died after I was born I was raised by my grandparents there for about five years and then went back to live with my father on the south side of Chicago and I lived there during the school year and then went back in the summers to spend with my grandparents these are two very significant worlds and when I would tell people that I was from the south side of Chicago they would usually say what suffered and I would say no actually I lived in the city so I have a history and an understanding of both Iowa in a fairly world perspective and the very urban reality of Chicago they are two very rich but very very different dynamics I have spent the last 14 years in public office as a county supervisor in Lynn County which is just the county to the north of us and for a while before that I was a museum director so kind of like Chris you have to put up with the fact that I believe at my heart I'm a bit of a storyteller and the fact that Chuck would even give someone in politics a microphone is stunning so for me I'm going to tell you a couple of stories that for me are instructive about place and understanding place remember we're in Iowa I grew up on the south side of Chicago I was a political animal at heart in Iowa you get access to political candidates like you don't in other places in the nation I am reminded by my county colleagues in New York and California of this often so I had an opportunity in O.A. I was asked to join Barack Obama after he had done an event and drive with him out to the airport as many of you will do later today but so then at the national check and slobac museum and library it was post flood we had an epic flood in O.A. and almost flood a few weeks ago and we're driving out and I'm of course playing the good policy person about policy to this man I think might be president because you have to leverage every opportunity when it comes and he said would you just tell me a little bit about yourself and I said well okay so I grew up in this state but I also lived on the south side of Chicago and he went you did what how did I not know this and I said bad staff work you know bad staff when we make the turn to get on 380 and there's that stretch of property that goes out to the airport which is largely farmland I made a switch because I know he likes baseball and so I said senator do you know that on any given Sunday in Iowa there are men who will walk out of cornfields that look just like that to play baseball in a place called the field of dreams and he looked at me but what was even better was the two guys sitting in the front seat they turned around oh my god I'm thinking dry don't do that but at the same time I said and let me tell you that if you look right now you see black-eyed Susan's blooming on the side of the road it is closing in on 8 feet high it was a beautiful blue sky much like today but there were big puffy white clouds out there for me a quintessential summer Iowa landscape I said do you know what the word Iowa means in the Misquaki language Iowa means beautiful land tell me there isn't a more beautiful place right now than where we're dry and then we had a great conversation about baseball the point being you anchor people to your knowledge of your place and we do not serve ourselves well when we don't know the stories of the place that we live and call home and I honestly believe you individually cannot tell politicians like I was what that means to you and to other people in this community that they cannot serve you well politicians must know that this story of the place they live in is important is valuable and not discounted nor can any of the warts and ugliness of some of the places we live be discounted either it isn't just the pretty stories because if I talked about Native American history in Lynn County I have to talk about how the Misquakis were discounted and segregated within art we have those conversations someone asked and said yesterday that as a farmer they weren't listened to and they weren't heard that is a place we are dying in right now in this political environment because we do not understand that there are thousands upon thousands of people in this country who are desperately afraid they do not know where their economies are going they do not have a sense of the future which means no hope if we cannot use the inclusion of the places we live to tell a different story my own fear and anxiety goes up and I believe that in a very wonderful place like Iowa whose stories don't often get told a lot because we're very self-deprecating you know oh it's just Iowa you know no it's Iowa so I think that place has a very very important place in our discussions about politics about who we are as people and what types of communities are that we want to build the crazy about where I chose to sit which is great it's great to be on stage with all these folks that over the years particularly the last 8 years so I've had a chance to work with I do want to just take a moment and thank and echo Secretary Nilsack and thank the University of Iowa School of Public Health like Rupri DRA for bringing this group together this is a terrifically important conversation so so place about 90 miles that way of Highway 1 and then take a ride on 151 there was a place 33 years ago with a young man trying to figure out what he wanted to do and he was thinking about a vocation in the arts and getting a masters in fine arts theater or going into agriculture and rural policy typical typical he was like literally reading in the same stack Michael Shirtleck's audition Wendell Berry's essays on agri culture and Iowa Farmer Today a weekly magazine for production ag primarily and trying to figure out what to do in that sort of moment of a 23 year old or 22 year old trying to figure out what to do with his life there was a a dream of what if the two things could come together that the assets the cultural assets of rural places could truly inform and be able to rural policy and it's happening it's happening because of everybody in this room so that's 33 years ago and that was made by the way and I was 23 23 and it happened 15 years ago into the church of rural place making of place based policy in rural places by the right Dr. Reverend Charles Pleward and didn't truly that's when I first came across a workshop and had an opportunity and work in the U.S. Senate at that time and then in different places working for a couple of governors to kind of go deeper into this idea of policy making that's based on on local voice that's strategic that's asset based fast forward to 2009 and also president Barack Obama puts out a memo called place based policy it's a memo from four of the kind of senior policy types within the White House to the entire federal government to the agencies of federal government directing those agencies to look for opportunity to do place based policy I mean a big deal for people like me and people like us up here on the stage two years after that in 2011 in Piazza, Iowa well now it's maybe 1200 in five miles from the farm where I grew up President Barack Obama announced the creation of the White House World Council with the goal of making sure that federal agencies work together in a way that's more effective and that results in better impacts in rural places and a lot of that in fact most of the work of the White House World Council as we look at it five years later as we did at the World Forum last week is place based policy and it's place based policy a lot of it has been focused on regional economic clusters a lot of it has been focused on particularly in 2009 and 10 and 11 in the wake of the Great Recession really focused on economic job creation but more and more in the last three or four years there has been a real recognition of the contributions of the National Endowment of the Arts the work from Housing and Urban Development Sustainable Communities Initiative these leaders Earl Gold and Chris Massengill have done this work lifting up the amazing cultural assets of their particular regions so that that federal agencies and I would I'm not going to go through it but there is a seven page memo in your packets that is pretty walky kind of dry we're not really storytellers but it was really designed for policy makers in the future in the next administration in other places county policy makers, state policy makers to be able to see how it can be done when federal agencies try to break down their silos look at the human resources that they have look at the data that they have to empower people to make great places so so I want to talk I want to talk more about that but if you're into some you should read this actually it is good this document was not only for the policy makers it was for stakeholders so that stakeholders can go to those policy makers and say this can be done it's been done here's an example here's a bunch of examples this paper was as much for you as it was for policy makers the last thing I want to say is just pick up on something that Secretary Bilsack who of course is the chair of the White House Rural Council mentioned and he said how important people are to this whole equation they are absolutely tantamount the role of the federal government is to support the vision and the work and the passion of people of place based policy that's what the White House Rural Council has been endeavouring to do to get the federal government in that role of not leading, dictating telling but get it in the role of listening, supporting partners the foundation has been laid and it is now up to you and to a bunch of other folks how to build on that foundation and that's I think what we want to talk about in a little bit, thank you so we are the most within the ARC where we can live in Appalachia who believe that place making is actually better in Appalachia and while we don't need to be done that yet place making and the use and the focus on asset based development is where part of the ARC and the DNA is part of our investment strategy is really part of the way of making investments in the way we work in work with our communities when I started as federal chair we went through a process and we encouraged by Senator Burton's time to work through and develop variety of interagency agreements with all the federal agencies with the help of the White House Departmental Council it was quite a swap and we got it done but it was a really heavy lift and the challenge was how much lifting do we do here and how much benefit do we get from it and there were some important things that came out of it but then the White House World Council came along and also we had a fast track into the work that we were trying to to work case by case basis program agency by agency basis and really change the dynamics and change the economics of making those investments and provide us with a forum in place to reach out and to engage with us and we had a great relationship with NPA and we worked a lot with USDA quite a big open up and really liked the development of things like local food local places the road job accelerators the work we're starting now with broadband co-connected and still a series of initiatives that all of a sudden we were able to make sure that parts of Appalachia had a shop, had a place to to go and we're competitive for this sort of resources and really been an incredible tool for us to move forward now in our work I am a I get to travel a little bit and I come away from that with an incredible level of optimism about the future of Appalachia you are crazy and what are you talking about but you know it's the next best and that's an opportunity in America and it is that because the folks who live there because the creativity and the imagination energy of individuals who you don't see themselves as an entrepreneur but they are they're very committed to the communities they get every day and they work very hard to make sure that their community is going to be a better place for the kids and the grandkids than was themselves and then within these communities as we move away from one dominant employer often it opens up open level markets where we're able to provide other activities to other opportunities and create other industries and other work and certainly arts are an important part of that and we've seen that in this perfect throughout Appalachia and the challenge we have is how do we build the infrastructure how do we make sure the ecosystem is there the ecosystems are there and with those entrepreneurs' collides with their opportunities the changes and their likelihood of success is great that they're able to succeed they're able to move forward and that's where the challenge I think that we have you know the story of of base place economics and development is really about cis-engaging is about folks who are very connected to the community who have energy, who have vision who understand it's important not to give up and there will be failure along the way it's the understanding and the ability to work together it's about addition not division as you go through and you work to develop your community and take advantage of the assets it's about adding people it's not about competing against the next town openly it's about collaborating next town it's about developing your plan and working your plan and understanding that this is not a short-term deal but it's really a long-term investment the American economy can change virtually every day since the folks landed usually when I when I talk about this a little bit closer down the road in Jamestown and soon those changes will be great soon those will really suck but at the end of the day is how we live and the more we're engaged in our local views and looking and planning and developing those opportunities the better off we are you know we have great examples of the use of arts throughout atlacha as a way of strengthening and developing the economy with some brewery in Kentucky or a western section of North Carolina where the community colleges are also engaged in supporting the development of entrepreneurs and artisans the art grade and really our pride and joy example is the Crooked Road the Crooked Road is developed really as a result of the conference we had in North Carolina with the Made in America books with really developed and really brought together the artisans and community and the next step was the Crooked Road in southwest Virginia and the ability to really even organize books first around music and then around artisans and around local food and now around manufacturing so it's in our next generation the next step is something called where the mayor of Somerset, Ohio decided that it was time to get together and he learned and he developed his idea by visiting the Crooked Road so it's all about sharing it's all about understanding each other's visions and being able to move forward in a way that makes sure that your community is in a much greater place for your kids and your grandkids than it was for you thanks so much so I have three things that I thought might be useful for me to add into the Crooked Road in great discussion this morning the first is if you'll indulge me I just want to take a moment to thank publicly Chuck Fluharty who has become both a hero and a teacher of mine and working with him to work with a lot of formal philanthropy I spend a lot of time thinking about evaluation and metrics and indicators and if you want an indicator a formal indicator of the effect that Chuck has had on my life I work with an iPhone and the next feature and now when I go to my internet browser and I type in RRU Rupri is the first thing that comes on and Rupal is now number 2 see but that is actually true let's call it a blessing of working with 16 national foundations and one of the things that I think part of my job is to do is to pick on national philanthropy a little bit and one of the areas one of the areas that I would love help in and partnership in is pushing on national philanthropy when we create national programs that we say are intended for everyone but by our actions we only need some of us right so we start national awards for artists and then magically all of the artists who are awarded live in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles we start national programs where we say these are for every kind of American but we don't see any Native Americans so one of the things that I've talked about a lot in rural settings is it is so important for us to come together as a rural community and talk about our rural issues the other thing that is really important is that we make a concerted effort to show up at the everyone conversation so when there is a national conversation on housing we need to make sure that rural is there and that it's overrepresented because we're so often invisible we need to make sure that we're doubly visible when we show up when there is a national conversation on land use policy we need to make sure that everyone is there both urban and rural so the request the offer I would make to the room is for you to join me and tell me the support help you need in showing up and representing the everyone conversation and then the third thing I'd offer is I believe very much in the power of place based philanthropy and I'll say why in a moment and I also want to give us a pretty major caveat so one of the things that we need more of is focusing on what we have in common the areas of agreement because the definition of collaboration is everyone is trying to do the same thing and caring about the places we live and work is a pretty easy way to get everyone in the community to roll up and agree on the thing that we have to do together so I love that invitation to come together I love that invitation of policy the thing that it absolutely has to be twinned with however is an insistence on disaggregating data because if we only look at the place indicators rolled up that far we don't understand how policies are playing out among the individuals who live there I was just in Minneapolis, St. Paul and if you look at the twin cities on an aggregated level it's something like the number third best place to live in the United States on every indication there are fabulous things that are happening if you begin disaggregating that data by race you start seeing very different pictures so I believe that our policy, our focus are coming together absolutely needs to be place based on what we have in common and I believe that the way we measure our work, the way we change our work, the way we evaluate our work is by looking at all of the differences among the people who have in common and see how those things play out so as we are have this both federal policy, state policy philanthropic focus on this place based policy I want to insist that it always be twinned with that disaggregation of data so those are three things that I would offer into the room and look forward to talking more with everyone today hi everybody hi I thought this was real America, hi everybody I just wanted to say again a huge thanks to Chuck and Matt this might be the largest gathering ever of people talking about the role of arts and creating world communities and I want to congratulate you guys for that I'm a perspective about this meeting and it's just been awesome to be here I thought I could offer really quickly just kind of how I think we got here and where I think we're going from the federal perspective around place making when the White House said all agencies should focus on place, the NAA stepped up and said yes and we kind of pursued that in three ways the first was creating the our Tom program the second was to go to foundations and see if we could give them to investment it became our place I mean our place grant user in here yay there should be more of all of you talk to us afterwards and then the third was the federal relationships which is really really important about kind of where that's going so the first phase was kind of getting all that off the ground there was a lot of going over to other federal agencies and saying like hey we exist I mean we didn't even know that USDA did rules of elements that the primary people did that so when we first started to check we made it that far and then and certainly we were getting all the funds going over the second phase was very much about so what are the standards of practice of this right it's not rocket science we like to jump at the endowment that we're not the nuclear program right we're not going to send a man to the moon or Mars now but excuse me so we are really interested in like what are these do these things actually look like, what are they cost and then how do we spread that knowledge into the different networks which is I think what this meeting is very much about so as part of that phase two we created the endowment that we're all about funding existing networks for important policy places like rubric to just sort of imbue this knowledge into these kind of standards of practice into what they're doing already so the fact that rubric has engaged us to this level and if they're taking it as seriously as they are is unbelievably important from a policy perspective Chuck is modest they are so freaking important they're all federal and state policy people and so the fact that they're engaging the arts as an important piece of the puzzle that they're talking to all these folks about is just, it's enormously important so we're excited about what that phase three might be an important thing that has happened at the fed level I just want to talk about real quick it learns Jen Hughes she's back there in that corner Jen just got a promotion and it's part of the work at the federal agencies which is all about permanently on a staff level building out a place-based frame beyond this administration so when Sean Donovan was formerly head whenever he was the Office of Management and Budget he created something called the Community Solutions Partnership he doesn't love more federal wonky terms right? as I've created place making wasn't wonky enough so the Community Solutions Partnership was all about how do we get the federal agencies now they've built all these relationships in a place to do it permanently so there were kind of three strategies one was a legal strategy so 18 agencies have signed an MOU saying we're going to keep working this way it was a hustle for lots of lawyers the second strategy was to create permanent staff level positions people who would be high enough up have enough power to continue to work across agencies to continue to help communities Jen is our personal EEA please talk to her the first strategy was to train a lot of the people who work on these issues all the time but don't kind of know each other and just how to work this way more so there's been about almost I think six or seven hundred federal staff who will now train on how to work in helping places and how to coordinate our resources so we're just kind of getting to know each other better so this is all to say it's early days we're going to train with the federal level we're getting to know each other better I personally was thrilled at the session you had yesterday with the state arts agencies and the USCA state folks sitting in the same room saying hey we're working together now that from a federal policy in our perspective is a huge win I was just thrilled to see that because even maybe six or seven years ago none of those relationships existed so it is early days we're excited about what the phase three is going to look like I can't predict what's going to happen in three weeks I don't know what that's going to look like at the federal level but I can say that there is a permanent staff level effort to keep going on this and we're in it to win it and I'll leave it there for more conversation I believe that people in this room are the right people who align with this challenge and build a future that's about the people you advocate for every day I had a football coach who would always say for every game you never know the most important moments in your life when they're happening that's usually before we went out to get the hell beaten but I don't think we can let this moment pass without capturing I really don't and we're going to try to allow the rest of this morning to do that we're going to take a break here in a minute please don't leave because now is the chance to dialogue with these people and then dialogue with yourself this room is open until God comes I will not let them onto the doors afterwards to get together we're going to have themes on the walls and Teresa is going to take you through a facilitation if there's a thing you want to start to build a community about on your tables will be just posted notes put something up there and let's look and start to align close with a story first thing I want to say is it is such an honor and a privilege to have this panel I want to tell you we have been working the hill for 35 years we have never had a cadre of servant public leaders like these ladies and gentlemen let's express our appreciation we wish we had four hours because there's four hours of great stories I want to go I want to play off too what Doug said about what that young guy in that decision between agriculture and the arts had to go through that should never ever happen again in America they're aligned second thing Jamie was so honest I'm going to share two facts with you and we're going to take a break because of CDBG and other things these gentlemen working in the federal infrastructure every year have two to three hundred dollars less per capita in federal funding to give to rural community and economic development as opposed to urban that has been the history for 30 years in the federal government that is 23 billion dollars a year that is every year you ask why rural America's communities look different that's the first thing secondly American philanthropy is only doing outlays at perhaps 90 maybe 9 or 10 percent our personal belief is it's more like 3 3 percent of American philanthropy 6 percent for 75 percent of the land mass and 25 percent of the people who have stored the leadership for an urban nation in the future it is unwise to fill a philanthropic policy we have to think about this I'll end with a story Ryan last night is not family cowboying Sam Corris is a cowboy he's in Wrigleyville right now but he used to be a bull rider he just had once too much and he went to work as a leader in Rupri sorry but we're honestly king last crisis in agriculture we saved the old place I'm going to tell you a story about that we're in a hardscrabble county there's high walls all over our county we were running cattle above a 90 foot vertical high wall at the bottom of it was an underground mine at the Salation coal company head this is a true story folks and it's a metaphor and I'll connect it at the end there was a lovely young heifer out there walking through that field one day two amorous males of the bow vine connection took an interest in this young lass and they began to fight and I'm sitting in the pickup truck watching this from the other side of the high wall and they're fighting and fighting and they're getting near and near to that high wall and one of them pushes the other one over the high wall now my initial thought was holy shit $1,600 down the drain but my second thought was this is going to get interesting because that bull fell right into the entree porter for the consolidation coal company deep mine at three o'clock when the shift was coming off that bull fell got up thought about himself a little and looked around and saw a human being coming out with a wide on and stuff and they were kind of hard and he is tipped at something and that looks like something to solve it all there were 70 guys coming out of that shift that had the worst afternoon of their life they were up on pickup trucks they were scrambling on high walls and bulls went and they were running funnier than hell true story the point bull teacher I could pray for rural America this is more fun the point that bull attacked a lot of people that got harmed because it wasn't their fault he needed to solve an issue with that other bull at the top of the high wall my sense of the arts community is because we are so project based we end up fighting with other project based people because there is not enough project there is not enough money we know at the community level if you don't build a human group to sustain your commitment to the rural way of life it fails we must find a way to build sustaining structures for the amazing work you all do I hope we can do that this afternoon I think these six wonderful servants can help but it's mainly around these tables please only take 10 minutes here's the deal the breakout food is here take 10 minutes we'll give everyone a bathroom break the rest of the day is yours for Q&A and to chat together let's give this panel a quick