Mohn, Kate

Description

According to the United States Census Bureau, an estimated 50 million people live in rural areas of the United States—that is, nonmetropolitan areas with fewer than 50,000 people. All combined, rural Americans currently comprise 16% of the country’s population. Despite the idealized and romanticized versions of rural life often produced and consumed by American popular culture, the actual experience of rural living is widely divergent from the conventional cultural narratives. In the early twenty-first century, rural areas are deeply impacted by the issues of economic development, environmental degradation, and social equity but often lack many of the resources available to urban areas to address these concerns. The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) has been working for the past three years to help build stronger and more sustainable rural communities through its Greater Minnesota Arts Initiative (GMAI). The core focus of the GMAI is to partner student artists and designers with local organizations in service to creative rural development. Design thinking is used to investigate issues, acquire information, analyze knowledge, and propose solutions for concerns identified by community members. This program allows students to explore the social application of creative practices and provide rural communities with new creative resources. The college’s approach to this project is derived from four core principles for creative community building: to respect the artists, designers, and community; to think both systemically and holistically; to focus on approaches that are sustainable; and to set realistic goals and engage in honest assessment. The GMAI has piloted several different approaches to explore the potential of using art and design as resources for creative community building. The program has resulted in two Design in the Community classes focused on rural issues being offered to undergraduate students at MCAD, the creation of a summer residency program for student fellows, the hosting of an exhibition featuring rural Minnesota artists at MCAD, and an intensive weekend workshop and subsequent community skillshare event coordinated in west central Minnesota. Through the process of designing and implementing the initiative, the college has learned valuable lessons about how to best teach community-based design programs and has used these lessons to shape the goals of the program moving forward. As a result, the key goals and approaches of the program have been defined as demonstrating public practice models for students; providing professional development for students; creating tangible assets for community use; demonstrating design-thinking potential to students and community members; and cultivating student interest in rural areas. This project demonstrates that art and design can serve as novel tools to help equip rural communities for the challenges of the future through the process of creative community building. Community-based design projects that focus on a creative approach to addressing civic and social challenges benefit participating communities through the creation of tangible creative assets. Additionally, these programs have the potential to create long-lasting positive effects for students and institutions of higher education, as well as the broader civic infrastructure of the state.