Advocates tout ways art can give a boost to rural communities
BENTONVILLE — Investing in art is an opportunity to contribute to the vitality of rural communities, advocates say.
“It adds perspective,” said Matthew Fluharty, executive director of Art of the Rural. “It adds senses of connection and cultural history to economic development plans, to community engagement plans in communities.”
Art of the Rural is a nonprofit group in Winona, Minn., working to advance rural culture and quality of life through relationships connecting communities, cultivate dialogue and forward rural-urban exchange.
Art has the potential to create social cohesion within rural communities, allowing neighbors to understand each other in a more intimate way, Fluharty said.
“It can also create forms of connectedness in wealth that actually survive a single art show or a single play,” he said. “In many cases, the work of artists can actually reveal to us assets that are in our communities that may be underutilized or may be undervalued or may be not utilized in specific ways.”
Something as simple as a self-portrait art show in a library creates a cultural ex
perience, he said.
Towns that have become international hubs, such as Bentonville, were historically rural, said Rachel Reynolds, Meadowcreek Inc. head project steward, but have developed to introduce creative assets, such as Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Meadowcreek is a 400-acre nonprofit retreat and learning center in Fox, dedicated to enriching and sustaining rural communities by fostering the development of rural enterprises. Fox, about 21 miles southwest of Mountain View, is an unincorporated community of about 870 people in Stone County.
Crystal Bridges’ opening in 2011 contributed to the overall development of Bentonville, including creative and complementary businesses, such as art galleries, hotels and restaurants, said Shelli Kerr, city comprehensive planning manager.
“It’s good for tourism, it’s good for economic development and it really can add a lot of character to a community,” Kerr said of art. “That’s what the city was looking for.”
Ali Worley, 30, said she’s lived in the city for most of her life.
“Night life around the Bentonville square was practically nonexistent,” Worley said of when she was growing up. “In fact, my family would always say we were ‘going to town’ just to go eat at Restaurant Row in Rogers. And if we really wanted a treat, we would ‘go to the big city’ in Fayetteville.
“One might think this was 50-plus years ago, but in reality, it was only approximately 15 years ago,” she said. “I graduated high school in 2008, and even from that time, the growth in Bentonville has been exponential.”
Northwest Arkansas has a combination of urban and rural communities, Reynolds said.
“It is problematic to think of Northwest Arkansas as ‘rural,’” she said. “You really can’t separate the micropolitan towns from each other. That being said, there are several solidly rural places in the region.”
Reynolds includes Washington, Benton, Madison, Newton, Carroll and parts of Johnson, Franklin and Crawford counties as part of Northwest Arkansas, she said.
Some 41% of Arkansans lived in rural counties in 2017, according to the 2019 Rural Profile of Arkansas by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. About 14% of the United States’ population as a whole lived in rural counties.
The total number of residents in unincorporated areas and towns with a population smaller than 500 is about 44,000, of the total 227,500 in Benton County, and 38,000, of 208,000, in Washington County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
RURAL DIVIDE
A divide exists between rural and urban communities when it comes to funding the arts, said Allyson Esposito, executive director of a regional art service organization founded by the Northwest Arkansas Council.
“Traditionally, private philanthropy and municipal investment in arts and culture has been centered around large urban areas,” Esposito said. “One of the most common arguments for disproportionate urban funding comes down to the logic of population density, which is hard to argue with in terms of ‘bang for your buck’ impact.”
Many philanthropists also live in large urban areas and opt to invest in the communities in which they live, she said.
Rural communities receive roughly 3% of the total annual funding provided nationally for the arts by American foundations, Fluharty said.
“We’re looking at what’s a deep, massive multigenerational gap in funding for rural areas that is wildly inequitable,” he said.
Funding the arts is a conversation needed in both rural and urban communities, Esposito said.
“They all strengthen each other,” she said. “Our current times are causing more of us to reflect on the immense value — personal, economic, communal and otherwise — that the arts and creativity bring to all our lives, so there’s real hope there.”
CHOOSING RURAL
Many rural towns have experienced an out-migration as people leave to seek economic opportunity in urban communities, Fluharty said. Yet others are choosing to invest in the cultural opportunities that naturally exist in rural towns, he said.
“A lot of the work by folks in these rural communities in the last few years is going to have returns in that respect,” Fluharty said.
Julie Hall co-owns Kingston Square Arts in Kingston with her husband, Greg Hall, she said. The couple opened their art gallery and store in 2018 and feature work by about 20 artists from the Kingston area.
Kingston is an unincorporated community in Madison County with a population of about 600 people. About 16,576 people live in Madison County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“Working in a rural community is great,” Julie Hall said. “You meet very interesting people.”
Greg Hall is a potter who also owns Oddbowlz Ceramics, and Julie Hall works at the Berryville Public Library and helps operate the store, she said.
Having a place to display and sell functional and affordable Oddbowlz Ceramics items was a dream come true for her husband, she said. The couple opened in the historic Bunch Store on the town square, close to key town assets such a bank, a cafe, the library, the post office and several small businesses.
“That store has such a long history. It’s been owned by the same family for its entire life,” Hall said of the Bunch Store. “It still has a lot of their family lore in it, and there are people who come back since we’ve been running it who’ve been to that store their entire life.”
The relaxed pace of life is part of what drew the couple from central Arkansas to Kingston, she said, but also creates challenges for operating a creative business.
“Our kind of customer base is really tourists going to and from the Buffalo River and trying to get them to stop,” she said.
The laid-back nature of Kingston sometimes results in unanticipated store closings on the square, particularly on weekends when tourist traffic is the highest, she said. That limited retail presence during peak tourist season means people don’t often stop to explore downtown or their store.
“It’s really nice when you have at least a small group of stores open,” she said.
The limited foot traffic in town also limits the success of Kingston Square Arts, Hall said.
“Right now, I would say the store is a labor of love for us,” she said. “It’s not profit-making in any way.”
Yet the experience they’ve gained in Kingston has encouraged the couple to consider opening a second store in another community, Hall said.
Economic development in rural communities is dependent on market education, she said.
“Part of what we need is to really educate people about the power of handmade and the value of handmade and why it does need to cost a little bit more than what you can get things for in other places,” she said. “If you’re in larger, more urban communities, you might already have that kind of base going.”
CHANGING PERSPECTIVES
Perspectives on population density may be shifting during the pandemic, which could lead to increased cultural tourism for rural communities as people seek out less populated areas to live, work and play, Fluharty said.
Art can make the prospect of moving to a rural community all the more attractive, Esposito said.
“Art makes you want to get out of the car, to stay a while and enjoy the personality of a place — and sometimes even to stay and settle down,” Esposito said. “In the rural context, it can be particularly effective at keeping alive more traditional arts, crafts and makers’ occupations — and even in blending those roots with innovative new business or artistic productions models.”
Understanding how the pandemic has affected rural communities will be key to knowing how to move forward, Reynolds said, adding she’d like to see the development of more public and shared spaces for creation and marketing creative products and projects.
“I would like for the funders that support largescale art projects around Northwest Arkansas to invest in the creation of these spaces and then get out of the way, or better yet, support the spaces where makers and doers can come together to decide what is right and good based on their individual community’s needs and resources,” she said.
Such efforts could be linked within a regional system that would be ripe with talented artists and artisans, Reynolds said.
“It seems like a particularly special moment in societal history, one where we have the opportunity to re-imagine what ‘economy’ is and where its focus should be moving forward,” Reynolds said.
“This moment seems like as good as any to invest time, energy and resources in an arts-based economy that could reinvigorate artistic efforts and value in meaningful ways. Northwest Arkansas is uniquely situated to contribute to that vibrant vision.”