To produce more than I consume. There are myriad ways to do this: play music rather than download it; knit rather than go to the movies, grow food rather than buy it from a grocery story, cook rather than eat out. When I spend my time producing for my well-being rather than paying for it with dollars, I have a lot more fun, life is more interesting, and I just don’t have time to waste money.

This is what CRADLE is all about. Re-empowering people to produce for themselves whatever they can, rather than buying everything with dollars. It is a commitment to self-sufficiency, to the creation of what John McKnight and Peter Block call an “abundant community” that is capable of providing itself as much of what it needs as possible. Another word for this, which is the focus of Transition Culture, is resilience — the ability of a community to maintain itself when faced with a shock.

Well, small communities have been facing shocks for decades, and have been resilient in the face of them. But the place where communities allow the larger culture to most intrude is in the area of entertainment and self-expression. We have allowed ourselves to believe that only “special people” who appear on the cover of People Magazine really can entertain us. We have become entertainment consumers, and do not, as Shannon Hayes says, create more than we consume. This takes our power away from us. As McKnight and Block write, “A consumer is one who has surrendered to others the power to provide what is essential for a full and satisfied life. This act of surrender goes by many names: client, patient, student, audience, fan, shopper. All customers, not citizens. Consumerism is not about shopping, but about the transformation of citizens into consumers.”

I have lived in metropolises — New York City (twice, for heavens sake) and Minneapolis-St.Paul, and my experience is that people in places like these have fallen prey to consumerism far more than people in small communities, which is why I have focused CRADLE on small and rural areas. It isn’t because rural areas have been neglected (although they most assuredly have been), but because it seems to me as if small and rural communities haven’t gone as far down the road to dependence. There is a sense of self-reliance about the people I meet in Bakersville and Spruce Pine, a sense of determination to maintain the town’s identity. And part of that sense of independence should include the stories we tell ourselves, the songs we sing, the rituals we participate in, the skills we share.

Now is the time that I am looking for people who have something they’d like to share. It doesn’t have to be something “impressive,” something that could earn you a place on Dancing with the Stars or American Idol. It could be a story that was told to you by your grandmother, a skill you developed in the garden, a book you’d like to talk about with other people, an instrument that you’ve learned to play a little.

Please let me know. Leave a comment here, or drop me a note at PO Box 203 Bakersville NC 28705 or call me at 828-989-9468 or email me at swalters@cradlearts.org. Maybe it is someone you know who has something to share. Let’s make Mitchell County self-reliant!

Then I got up and provided some details about CRADLE.

And then Buncombe Turnpike played, and oh my wasn’t that great? As Bob Hensley said to me afterwards, it was great to have a bluegrass concert of almost all original songs. And what songs! I can still hear “I was born in the mountains of Western Caroline” ringing in my ears. And their guest instrumentalists on mandolin and dobro were amazing musicians. They added a sense of special event to the evening.

I hope everyone had a good time. I’ll be putting together a few more free events for April, so watch this space!

We have scheduled our first event to kick off the beginning of the Bakersville “Bringing the Arts Back Home” project! On Saturday, March 10th at 7:300 in the Historic Courthouse, the popular bluegrass band Buncombe Turnpike will play. Tickets are free and will be available at the door starting 30 mins before the concert.

Buncombe Turnpike

I am thrilled that Tom Godleski and Buncombe Turnpike will open up the project because in many ways they represent exactly what “Bringing the Arts Back Home” is all about. Tom writes songs about Western North Carolina,, many from his own experiences. It is so important that we in Bakersville, and everywhere else in the US for that matter, start telling our own stories, singing our own songs, and reclaiming our own creativity instead of simply buying whatever Hollywood, New York, and Nashville create for us. It isn’t that these mass media arts are somehow “bad,” but rather that they shouldn’t be the only thing we encounter.

Mitchell County has talent, Bakersville has talent — but we are regularly told that the talent we have isn’t “enough,” that we should just sit down, shut up, and let the “professionals” do it for us. Oh, we encourage our young people to be in plays, sing in choirs, and so forth, and that is very, very important. But creativity isn’t just for kids! But we can sing, we can tell stories, we can dance, and we can quilt and knit and make furniture and so many other things. And that is what “Bringing the Arts Back Home” is all about: creative self-sufficiency.

Well, enough — on March 10th, we’ll get things going. I hope to see you there, and that I’ll have a chance to talk to you and start getting to know you. I’m looking forward to it!

13. Whenever possible, sell subscriptions

Few businesses can successfully sell subscriptions (magazines being the very best example), but when you can, the whole world changes. HBO, for example, is able to spend its money making shows for its viewers rather than working to find viewers for every show.

The biggest opportunity for the music business is to combine permission with subscription. The possibilities are endless. And I know it’s hard to believe, but the good old days are yet to happen.

This is also the biggest opportunity for participatory arts, I believe. Instead of selling tickets to individual events, sell subscriptions and create a shows for subscribers.

Baker Brownell, The Human Community, 1950 

“Modern art activity can provide a new birth and new creative directions of usefulness for such a community. As art activity is developed, the community is recreated The vital roots of every phase of life are touched As the community is awakened to its opportunity in the arts, it becomes a laboratory through which the vision of the region is reformulated and extended And as the small community discovers its role, as the small community generates freshness of aesthetic response across the changing American scene, American art and life are enhanced.”

Robert Gard, Arts in The Small Communities, 1967 

Lately, we have seen the enormously negative effects of Big Money in politics through the creation of Super Pacs and the lifting of limitations on corporate political contributions as a result of Citizens United. Well, this situation has long been in place in the arts. The wealthy and powerful dominate governing boards, and major institutions court major donations from rich individual donors and their foundations. And then we wonder why the money is centralized in elite, white, urban institutions and why those institutions present art that appeals to that demographic.

It is important that CRADLE not fall prey to this pattern. Local CRADLE organizations should have boards comprised not only of town leaders and elites, but of people representative of the population as a whole. This means choosing board members not for their ability to contribute and raise money, but for the value of their viewpoint and wisdom.

In the book The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods, authors John McKnight and Peter Block call on citizens to create powerful and competent communities based on three “universal properties”:

• The Giving of Gifts – The gifts of the people in our neighborhood are boundless. Our movement calls forth those gifts.
• The Presence of Association – In association we join our gifts together, and they become amplified, magnified, productive, and celebrated.
• The Compassion of Hospitality – We welcome strangers because we value their gifts and need to share our own. Our doors are open. There are no strangers here, just friends we haven’t met.

The latter is particularly important, as it promotes what Block calls a “welcome at the edge.” It isn’t only the rich and powerful who have gifts to offer, but those who have been traditional ignored or marginalized. And those must be actively sought out and celebrated.

We must not continue to waste the talents of our people. We must not continue to ignore the stories of our people. We must celebrate the richness that exists in all people. And we must create an artistic infrastructure that promotes these values.

Why Bakersville?

One reason was Bakersville’s town motto: “Gateway to the Roan, Home to the Arts.” But it was much more than that.

In January of 1998, Bakersville was the victim of a major flood that damaged much of the town to such an extent that it was declared a disaster. The citizens decided not only to clean up and rebuild, but to make Bakersville better than it had been in the past. One part of that project involved renovating the historic courthouse into an arts and education center. It took over a decade, but the town,

Historic Mitchel County Courthouse

with the invaluable assistance of Handmade In America’s Small Town Revitalization Program, raised over a million dollars for the renovation. In March of 2010, the courthouse was opened. The courtroom had been converted into a beautiful performance space complete with capabilities for livestreaming events over the internet. Other rooms in the building were converted into smart classrooms and offices for local historic and educational organizations.

In 2011, I received a call for proposals from the National Endowment for the Arts “Our Town” grant program. I decided to collaborate with HandMade in America, and contacted Judi Jetson to discuss which of the small towns in her program would be best for the project. While there were several towns with renovated performance space, we ultimately8 agreed that Bakersville would be the focus. The “Our Town” grant required a collaboration with town leaders, and Bakersville had an impressive group in place who had spearheaded the courthouse renovation. We had meetings with Bob Hensley, Susan Ledford, Dan Barron, and mayor Charles Vine and all were strongly supportive of the program.

The NEA grant we put together made the final round of proposals but ultimately was not funded, I was determined that Bakersville was the right place for this project. I decided to scale back the size of the request and approach a local foundation whose focus was on Mitchell County and who had demonstrated an interest in the arts. After looking more closely at the budget, I decided to reduce it to $25,000 (the original grant was many times greater than that). While I expect that I could have asked for more, or raised additional money from another foundation, I felt that I wanted to show that it wouldn’t take a huge commitment of funds to get a CRADLE organization going. After all, small towns don’t have a great deal of available cash, and I wanted this process to be replicable in other small towns across the country.

I partnered with the Toe River Arts Council, where Executive Director Denise Cook was an enthusiastic supporter. Together, I believe we will succeed in creating a vibrant, sustainable participatory arts program in Bakersville.

And so I will use this blog to describe the process of creating this pilot over the coming year. I hope you will follow along, asking questions and making suggestions. And if you are a member of a small town and interested in creating a CRADLE organization where you live, please contact me at swalters@cradlearts.org.

I had been invited down to Georgia (music cue: Charlie Daniels Band The Devil Went Down to Georgia) by Lisa Mount, and it just so happened that my wife needed to attend a meeting just down the road in Cleveland that same weekend, so I was thrilled to make the 2-1/2 hr trip from Asheville.

Sautee Nacoochee is an unincorporated community in northern Georgia. The performance space is a 1930s’era gym that has been converted into a large, open stage surrounded on three sides by 100 seats. On the Center’s campus is also the Center Gallery, devoted to the work of artists who live within 50 miles of Sautee Nacoochee, a conference room, a history musuem, dance and art studios, and an environmental education resource center. The newest addition is a museum devoted to the folk pottery of Northeast Georgia. According to the SNCA website, “Because of the extensive arts programming offered in recent years, Sautee was designated one of the “100 Best Small Art Towns in America” in a book by the same name written by John Villani.” Deservedly so!

Lisa Mount, who was named “one of the 100 Most Influential Georgians” in 2008 by Georgia Trend Magazine, gave me the “nickel tour.” In addition to her work with SNCA, she is very active nationally as a consultant with Artistic Logistics, for whom she has helped such non profit arts organizations as Childsplay, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival Foundation, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Cornerstone Theater Company, the Neo Futurists, the Network of Ensemble Theaters, and the Maryland Ensemble Theatre. Her seemingly boundless positive energy made me and everyone else feel welcome.

This was the fifth summer for Headwaters. Every two years, there has been a new version written by well-known playwrights Jo Carson and Jerry Grillo, and this year was a compilation of what might be called the “greatest hits” of the first two productions. Next year there will be a new play called Didja Hear? about “what we can and can’t (and will and won’t) hear.” (Carson’s book Spider Speculations: A Physics and Biophysics of Storytelling [published by TCG Publications] is a must-read for anyone interested in this sort of community storytelling.)

I loved the production, which was performed by local performers, including a wonderful band for the numerous songs. There also were shadow puppets and a whimsical framing device about two bears rescued by a local theatre producer from the bear park who have been conscripted to write scenes of the various stories they are provided. They are motivated by Moonpies…  The stories are a mixture of tall tales, local history, and personal remembrances, all very much connected to Sautee Nacoochee. As the Director’s Note said, “Headwaters could only happen here, with these people — it is theater of, by, for, with and about this community.”

I was particularly struck by Nadir Mateen’s powerful story entitled “Honor & Dignity” about an African-American educator with a doctorate in education who, when Georgia desegregated, found himself forced to fire all of his African-American teachers himself (after all, no white person would be willing to be taught by a black teacher) and as a reward remain employed in the system (he was 18 months from retirement), or have the white administrators do it and be out of work. He decided on the former, feeling that it was important for at least one black person to remain in the system, and after he had fired the teachers, he was given a job teaching math at the reform school, which he did for the 18 months until he was able to retire. Mateen, who has an MFA in acting from the University of Florida, delivered the story with understated power and emotional depth.

Other highlights included a hilarious story entitled “Foot,” about a woman whose brother gave her an old prosthetic foot as a joke present, and she decided to put it sticking out from underneath the hood of her car as she drove around town, which lead to unexpected consequences and a wonderful statement about our legacy perhaps being those things that made other people laugh. Lisa Mount’s song “Hold Fast to the Laughter” brought that point home.The ensemble delivered a simple and powerful rendition of Stephen Foster’s haunting song Hard Times, and a Elsie Nelson told the story of a “woods colt” (and illegitimate child) and her travails through life.

The production was beautifully paced, and staged simply and evocatively with just enough spectacle to keep things interesting but not to overwhelm the stories. It wasn’t slick, it was authentic, it felt rooted in place. It is a marvelous example of the kind of production that I hope to encourage people involved in CRADLE to create.

To everyone involved in Headwaters: A Goodly Portion of Our Songs & Stories, thanks you so much for an inspiring evening, and Lisa, thank you so much for the invitation, and for providing another example of how rural and small communities can be places of vibrant, authentic art.