Reframing the Impossible into Opportunities: Rural Creative Placemaking with John Davis
“Listening to your community can help reframe risks into opportunities.”
- John Davis
Interview conducted by Mina Kim
Warroad RiverPlace, the first arts and cultural center in the U.S. to be accessible by boat, kayak, canoe, ice skate path, snowmobile, and cross country skiers, in Warroad, MN (Pop. 1,824). Photo courtesy of Nixon Norman.
What does it mean to be “rural,” and how are arts and culture integral to rural community development? For John Davis, who has over 35 years of small town and rural creative social change work, “rural” encompasses a multitude of realities depending on geography and culture. As he shared, “It means creative problem solving, it means remote, it means Native nations, Indigenous sovereignty. It can also mean small towns, agriculture, opportunities for unique collaborations, and the importance of narrative shifting and storytelling for continued rural sustainability.”
In this interview, John discusses how valuing local people’s experiences and listening to multiple perspectives have guided him in co-creating processes relevant and meaningful to community members. He also highlights lessons learned from earlier projects in New York Mills (Pop. 1,301) and Lanesboro (Pop. 717), both in Minnesota, as well as his current work with Warroad RiverPlace, the first arts and cultural center in the nation to be accessible by boat, kayak, canoe, ice skate path, snowmobile, and cross country skiers, in Warroad (Pop. 1,824), Minnesota.
What brought you to creative placemaking?
Well, I'm an artist. I went to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design where I studied fine arts and graphic industrial arts. During this time, the most impactful class I took was actually Creative Problem Solving, which helped me reframe things that seemed impossible into opportunities. After graduating, I didn’t get a job in the arts right away, and I ended up painting houses and barns to save enough money to live in rural America, like that was my dream. I didn't really have a plan. I just knew I loved the arts and wanted to live a life that had meaning through the arts.
So I didn't move to the community with the idea of doing anything in the arts. It was when I was painting houses and barns that I just listened to people's conversations about their hopes and dreams, and we talked about art and philosophy, and I just thought it wasn't fair that people in a rural place didn't have access to opera and music and painting and arts programming in the schools.
I found an old abandoned farm outside of this community called New York Mills, fixed up this old farmhouse, and ended up turning it into an artist residency center where I recruited emerging urban artists to share their talents in a rural community, to provide something that would offer real life experiences for the artist and for the community while helping to create a bridge for mutual understanding and learning. And that's kind of how I came into creative placemaking–just listening.
Can you share how the process of building a collective vision in Warroad has unfolded?
In Warroad, the process is ongoing and still unfolding, but listening has created a seismic shift in what the roadmap for Warroad RiverPlace can become. We’ve been holding community Town halls and numerous tours of the facility for community groups like The American Legion, VFW, school children and teachers, business owners, sportsmen clubs and city council members. The most exciting part is when you invite someone and have them go, “Oh, my goodness. We’re invited, too?” When a community member puts on a hard hat and safety vest, and hears about not only what the possibilities are, but that their ideas and input are critical to the mission, a whole new level of ownership and excitement begins to take place. It’s not just about people feeling engaged, but that they actually are engaged in its success from the beginning of the process.
I also believe that it’s important to rethink the questions asked. So, instead of “How do we sell the idea of arts and culture to the community and market that idea?”, reframe the question to, “How can we make arts and culture relevant in people’s lives?”, whether they are a farmer, teacher, truck driver, parent, veteran, city council member or business owner.
Community Tour of Warroad RiverPlace with John Davis. Photo by Samantha Thibert.
How about in other communities where you’ve worked? What did it look like to build a collective vision?
When I moved to Lanesboro in 2000, I proposed instead of putting all art activities into one building, what if the entire town became the arts center, or an art campus? This idea was unanimously rejected by all of the arts organizations in Lanesboro for one simple reason: It wasn’t a shared vision. Over time I reframed this challenge as an opportunity and asked the question: How can the arts and culture solve and address community challenges? This became the roadmap. It took 10 years for this idea to become a shared vision of the community, in part by building partnerships with the City Council, Chamber, community groups and stakeholders to co-create the vision of a rural community transformation. In 2015, after the completion of a successful $1 million capital campaign by Lanesboro Arts, the City of Lanesboro unanimously passed a resolution proclaiming the entire city as an “Arts Campus,” becoming the first rural town in America to do so.
Sometimes, when folks think of engaging communities, they understand it as a way to gather information. How do you approach inviting community members into a meaningful conversation?
Think about it as putting on a different hat. I think sometimes we get so caught up in goals and outcomes that we forget sometimes to think of a different way to support the work, as opposed to extracting information that's going to be helpful for our own cause.
For example, there’s a morel season in Minnesota. Morels are highly prized. If you're out foraging in the woods, you have to know how to look for morels. If you don't know what you're doing, there's also rattlesnakes and poison ivy. And if you're just looking at it from one perspective where the focus is only on the morels, you're going to miss some of the obstacles and not know that you might be stepping on native plants or doing harm. Looking at things from the perspective of where you're visiting, and just being aware, truly aware, of the place and people that you're visiting, as opposed to what you need from the place, is key. And I think if you're able to shift that thinking, it allows for more meaningful collaborations and conversations.
Patience is also important. Often, people have their own timeframes related to producing certain outcomes, as opposed to considering the natural pace of a community.
Can you share an example of shifting the impossible to possible in your previous work?
Well, in New York Mills, I saw there was an old abandoned building on Main Street. I ended up attending city council meetings for two years, and eventually asked the city for funding to invest in this historic building. And I think the community kind of laughed at first, like, “Oh, you've got really big hopes and dreams!” and “This really is impossible!” But over time, the community really bought into this idea of using arts as an economic development tool, especially as city and community members started discussing what risk looked like in a small town. When I presented risk as doing nothing, a city council member said, “Well, we know what doing nothing looks like.” The city ended up voting to give money to this teeny organization which later became the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center, which has changed the landscape of rural investing in the arts and creative placemaking in Minnesota.
So, listening to your community can help reframe risks into opportunities. I also worked with the city to track economic data. We had a very skeptical economic developer who worked for the city. He did a survey before the Cultural Center opened, and because of that survey, we had a baseline of statistics about the area prior to the opening, and for five years afterwards, we tracked hard economic data. During that time, jobs increased 40% and 17 new businesses relocated to the community.
What do you envision for rural creative placemaking in the next ten years?
Whether it’s called creative placemaking or creative placekeeping, the future depends on investment, collaborations, and easily accessible resources. Building networks across sectors and providing innovative and accessible resources for rural communities and leaders. It means investing in and cultivating the next generation of rural leaders. It means the same partners that might be willing to strategically invest, do so with a non-extractive mindset. There is incredible value with lifting the successful strategies and case studies that have emerged over the past several decades in rural placemaking.
Who are some leaders in rural creative placemaking that inspire you?
There are so many!
Julie Garreau with Cheyenne River Youth Project in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, which is dedicated to giving Lakota youth and families access to the culturally relevant, enriching, and enduring opportunities. Carlton and Brandi Turner with Sipp Culture in Utica, Mississippi, who champion arts and culture as a foundational element in building community health and wellness in the rural South. Donna Neuwirth and Jay Salinas with the Wormfarm Institute in Reedsburg, Wisconsin and their incredible and thoughtful work in regional economic development and lifting up rural artists with the Farm D’Tour program, artists residency program, and Fermentation Festival. Maria Sykes, with Epicenter in Green River, Utah centers affordable rural housing as a key creative placemaking and community building strategy. And Matthew Fluharty, with Art of the Rural, in Winona, Minnesota for his rural thought leadership, curated conversations and rural convenings.
Any last words of advice?
Discover and learn about the community as much as possible. Find local ambassadors and champions representative of all sectors and cultures of the community. This means reimagining partnerships and collaborations. It also means having a long-term strategy of engagement that is ongoing. Listening and being responsive to challenges is not a one-time thing.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
John Davis (he/him) is Executive Director of Warroad RiverPlace in Warroad, MN (pop. 1,824). He is also the founder and former Executive Director of Lanesboro Arts in Lanesboro, MN (pop. 754). His work with the Lanesboro Arts Campus initiative resulted in the city’s selection as one of the top 12 Small Town Artplaces in America for 2013. The following year, Lanesboro won a 2014 Bush Prize for Community Innovation. In 2018, Mr. Davis received a Bush Fellowship to further study and advance the field of rural arts and rural sustainability and is currently a leadership team member of the Waterers, a regional assembly initiative of ArtPlace America. Mr. Davis was the recipient of the 2011 Visionary Leadership Award from the Minnesota Council of Non-Profits for his community-building work in the arts in Lanesboro. His innovative work in New York Mills, MN (pop. 1,199) has been recognized as a national model for rural economic development in the arts, and New York Mills was twice recognized as one of the top 100 small arts town in America. Davis has over 30 years of experience with small town and rural creative social change work. He is a national speaker on rural arts issues, risk and innovation. His work has been featured on National Public Radio and broadcast on C-Span; it has also been featured in Corporate Report Magazine, USA Today, The New York Times, and the NBC Today Show.