Transcript
[INTRO MUSIC]
Denny Spinner:
This is Denny Spinner from the Indiana University Center for Rural Engagement. Welcome to Our Indiana: Stories from Rural Hoosiers. Today, we're recording at the Loogootee Public Library here in Martin County, Indiana.
And we are here with Jessica Potts, the executive director for the Martin County Alliance for Economic Growth; Jon Racek, the program director and teaching professor for comprehensive design at the IU Eskenazi School for Art, Architecture + Design; and Nicole Vasconi, the quality of place liaison for the IU Center for Rural Engagement.
Welcome to the program, everyone.
Nicole Vasconi:
Thanks, Denny.
Jon Racek:
Thanks.
Jessica Potts:
Good to be here.
Denny Spinner:
Well, Jessica, you're here in Martin County. We gave your title, Martin County Alliance for Economic Growth. What’s that all about? Tell us a little background about your work.
Jessica Potts:
Yeah, so we're the local nonprofit here in Martin County. We work in economic development initiatives for the county, and what is that in a rural community? So a lot of our work is working with our businesses on retention, building our businesses, growing our businesses here, working on expanding and retention of our businesses. We work on housing initiatives and a lot of quality of life. The alliance has been very focused on a lot of quality-of-life initiatives.
Denny Spinner:
And that ties right in with why we're here.
Jessica Potts:
Yes.
Denny Spinner:
You've been engaged with the Rural Placemaking Studio here from IU. And so, again, setting the stage for everyone—give us a little explanation about what Rural Placemaking Studio is. And what is that work about?
Nicole Vasconi:
Yeah, sure. I'll go ahead and start. So I've been working at the CRE the past two or so years, and during that time, I got to know Jon Racek, the director of the Comprehensive Design program, and we realized there was kind of a kind of a gap in services in rural communities where a lot of towns were seeking services with design work—some of that pre-design work that happens before projects are implemented. And it served a really important need for students as well to give them more learning experience.
And so the Center for Rural Engagement kind of became, like, a hub for that kind of activity, and we were able to connect the Comprehensive Design program to communities that were seeking design work in a way that was affordable for the communities, or to make it possible, because we provide the service for free while students get real-life experience.
And placemaking is a really important project in all sorts of different communities, but especially rural spaces. Because we realize that rural towns, in order to revitalize, they need that influx of new ideas and new energy that students can bring, and our faculty as well.
So to really just help things get up and going, and it's been really phenomenal to see how communities have taken off with the ideas that students have brought. It's been really refreshing.
Denny Spinner:
Jon, from your perspective, from looking at it as you’ve got engaged and started coming into some of the rural areas and doing this work, what is it about the program that really ties together for you and your students in your work?
Jon Racek:
Yeah. Couple things. I think that, for one, these students, a lot of them are coming from Indy. They’re coming from more sort of urban parts of Indiana. And they get a chance to kind of come into these towns and see what's interesting about these towns. And that's really part of our goal, is to take what is unique about these places and highlight them and augment them and turn them into something physical, whether it's a mural or a piece of public art or something.
Another part of this process for students is that they get to work with real clients. They have real deadlines. And the work has real consequences. You know, we are taking the trust of these communities to deliver, and we take that really seriously. And that's a big part of the learning for these students, that this is not some theoretical project. This may or hopefully will be implemented in these communities and last there for a long time. So it's serious work, and we try to make sure the students understand that.
Yeah, I think placemaking, just as a faculty member, this is such a great opportunity to turn sort of conversations and theory into practice. And so I love the work. I love these students being able to see their sketches and their ideas turned into something real. So it's super rewarding for me.
Denny Spinner:
I'm going to back up to Martin County. We said we’re here in Martin County—a very diverse county. It’s one of the smallest counties, population-wise, in the state.
Jessica Potts:
Yes.
Denny Spinner:
Give us a little background about Martin County and the communities that you serve, Jessica.
Jessica Potts:
Yeah, so Martin County is in the southern part of Indiana, obviously. We are very centrally located. You can be a lot of places in an hour. So we are probably an hour-and-a-half, an hour and 45 minutes south of Indianapolis. We're about an hour from Bloomington.
But we are also home to NSWC Crane, which is, you know, growing, growing for economic development. There’s tons of job opportunity there. With that comes challenges though. We are a very small county, population around 9,800. But we also have a lot of natural assets here. We have the state forest, the Martin State Forest. We have the Hoosier National Forest.
So with a small county comes challenges as well—you know, federal and state property being taken out of our tax base. We have so much beauty, and the rural placemaking was a great program for that on us wondering and figuring outhow we can emphasize off of our natural assets.
Denny Spinner:
And you serve three pretty distinct communities as well.
Jessica Potts:
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Denny Spinner:
I mean, the county is whole, but then there's three municipalities that all have a personality of their own.
Jessica Potts:
Different, they do. Very much so. Like the City of Loogootee. They are around 2,500 people there, and they're also where Highway 15 and Highway 231 intersect. And then you have the Town of Shoals, who's a small community as well. And they have so many beautiful natural assets. They have the river, the White River that flows directly through the community. And then you have the Town of Crane, who is literally right in the tech park, basically. They're right on the edge of the tech park.
Denny Spinner:
And you didn't mention the Jug Rock.
Jessica Potts:
The Jug Rock. Absolutely. You have got to see it. When Jon came down for the first time, we found it. He took a picture.
Jon Racek:
It was amazing.
Jessica Potts:
Absolutely. [LAUGHS]
Denny Spinner:
You can't describe it. It's just something you just gotta come and see.
Jessica Potts:
No, you have to see.
Denny Spinner:
It is a truly natural phenomenon there.
Jessica Potts:
There is a car there—I mean a different plate, you know, sometimes even a different state out of county. Someone’s always there looking at it.
Denny Spinner:
To all our listenings, you know, it's worth the drive just to see the Jug Rock along with the other things..
Jessica Potts:
It is. It is.
Denny Spinner:
So with a rural county, I mean, part of the Center for Rural Engagement—that was all about, let's engage rural communities near Bloomington in a process where the university can be an asset and bring things to a community that maybe they didn't have an opportunity to do, maybe aspirational things.
So as you looked at economic development in Martin County as part of your job, why does it make sense to make this connection with the university and do these quality of place or these placemaking type of projects? What makes sense out of that for you?
Jessica Potts:
Oh, absolutely. We love the outside opinion. It's one of those things where you live in these communities, and you see the thing same things over and over again, and you start talking about history and all the things you do here in your community. And then the outside perspective comes, and you're like, oh, that would be a great place for a mural. Or what about an outside seating area?
And whenever the placemaking studio was working with the Town of Shoals—so much of that community is in a floodplain, and they're wanting to expand their park. And they just recently purchased 3 acres that is in a floodplain, but they're hoping to expand their park. And the students did a great job at putting a design together for park expansion in a floodplain.
Denny Spinner:
So Nicole, I know that every community has a different challenge. As you connected with Martin County, what challenges did you see? What was the excitement about what you saw? Was the opportunity here? Give us a little idea about some of the specific things that the placemaking studio took on as they partnered up with Martin County.
Nicole Vasconi:
Yeah, I was introduced to Jessica before we had even started the Rural Placemaking Studio through a faculty member through IU Kelley School of Business, Keith Dayton, who's very passionate about community engagement, especially in rural spaces. And he has a connection to Martin County.
And just right away, I loved the energy. I visited Shoals. I went through Loogootee the first time I came through the county. And I just was so impressed by how friendly everybody was. There was such a commitment to making their community a better place through just everyday actions. And people really love where they live in Martin County, and there's so much natural beauty. So that really stuck out to me. The energy of the place was so positive.
And as I started working more with Jessica, we started to talk about different ways to liven the Main Street where some of the main businesses are in Shoals, the Historic River District area. We first started talking about what was going on in Shoals. How could something like creative placemaking be a strategy that integrates arts, culture, creativity, design to address challenges in communities and strengthen and enliven communities?
And we kind of focused in on the Main Street area, and then we started working with Jon. And Jon had brought up the idea of having more signage on the Main Street for the businesses there to attract more customers potentially, just create better visuals as you're walking down the street, being able to see uniform designs kind of hanging off the building. And just really make it more vibrant and create a bit of a spark that would make people want to stop and check it out whether they live there or were visitor.
That kind of started that whole conversation. And then we talked more about the ballpark, and the Main Street Committee has so many ideas for that space that it became a really fun project, I think, from the start and a big challenge for the students to kind of visualize, well, how could you use that floodplain in a way that's sustainable and will create a beautiful space where people can socialize and have lots of activity?
And in addition to Martin County, we worked in about eight other counties as well. So a lot of these projects had really similar themes. And these communities we worked in, they already have a lot of really amazing, cool stuff going on. We're just one small piece of an already really vibrant picture, and we really just help them keep momentum and keep those efforts towards revitalization for their town, whatever that might look like.
But definitely Martin County has stuck out, and particularly the Town of Crane. We did a special project there as well. We did some signage for the town, like some gateway signage that says “Welcome to Crane.” And for a small community of about 200 or so people, that's so meaningful and really creates a sense of pride and of place and social cohesion.
Denny Spinner:
Jessica, have you seen the spark, I guess, as this happened? You know, what was the attitude as this started happening, and how has that changed through this process? Is there a better vision now, or is there more excitement about that?
Jessica Potts:
Oh, absolutely, yes, yes.
Denny Spinner:
How did that develop through as the students and the work from Indiana University came and engaged with the folks here? Like I say, you're about an hour south. I think people are very much tied to the university. A lot of people work at the university. There's a definite connection between Martin County and Indiana University. But as that came in, how did you see that that grow and develop and what the vision might be for Martin County going forward?
Jessica Potts:
It actually put the vision on paper and the ideas on paper for us. So this Main Street has seen so much growth. And I say “growth”—so much being two new businesses opening in the last year, which they haven't had a new business open downtown in—I don't remember when. So in 2023, they got a Mexican restaurant, which everyone needs some, you know, queso and salsa in their life. And they also got a new hardware store. And the hardware store was huge for the community because they offer so many resources. H&H Hardware is now down there in Shoals. So two new businesses on Main Street. March of 2023 rolls around, and the community gets their Main Street designation in Oden through the Office of Community and Rural Affairs. That was a huge win.
So it's like the momentum just kept building. And then we're bringing these outside resources in, and this different vision that are seeing the community in different ways than what we do every day when we drive through, you know, Main Street. So they're talking about stringing lights, adding art, saying, how can we add more art to the community? And adding gathering space. And it's just a great energy where people that have lived there are feeding off the outside energy, I feel like. So it's been a great—I mean, it's a positive energy. That’s all I can say about it.
Denny Spinner:
And was there a trust factor? I mean, was there a little hesitancy? Like, well, what's going to happen here? But now that it's gone through, there’s a good trust relationship here, right?
Jessica Potts:
Absolutely. Yeah, I don't know that there was ever—rural communities, we are so appreciative of all the resources we can get, especially when you're on a small budget. So we were like, you're going to work with us, and it's not going to cost us anything? Yeah, absolutely. Bring everybody you can.
Denny Spinner:
So Jon, as you mentioned earlier in your comments, you know, you’re introducing students that may have never been in a community of 200 people or 2,500 people into that atmosphere. What are the challenges that you see as students come into this and this experiential learning happens? How do you see the challenge there, and what happens at through this transformation of being engaged with folks in a community like Loogootee or Shoals?
Jon Racek:
Yeah, I think a lot of our students will look at rural communities and say, here's a list of things that they don't have. And maybe even the communities sort of see that themselves. I think one thing that we do in this process is a asset-based community development process, where we are asking the communities, “What are the assets in your community?”. Jug Rock, right?
Jessica Potts:
Absolutely. [LAUGHS]
Jon Racek:
That’s top of the list for Shoals, maybe. But, you know, what are the things that already exist in your community? Now, those can be physical assets, but they also could be people with their own networks. And so we are trying to always sort of stress the abundance of assets that these small communities have. And the students see that. And that really changes how they view these rural communities as well. They don't see them as places to drive through, but they start seeing them as these repositories of history and really interesting cultural entities that don't exist in places like Bloomington, or that Bloomington might be losing, right? So, yeah, I think these students, they leave this program seeing these rural communities as something a lot more.
Denny Spinner:
And also, it‘s a real-life experience in the field that they want to pursue, perhaps.
Jon Racek:
That's right.
Denny Spinner:
And looking at this—and again, you mentioned this—you're giving some real-life experience that they're working one-on-one with the people in downtown Shoals to talk about what their needs are. So that's a great experience for a student, you know, coming through a program like yours.
Jon Racek:
Yeah, and we run the studio like an office. So the faculty members are sort of the principles of the office, you know, in this analogy. Then we have, every student is in charge of their own project, and we bring in other people, other students within the program as needed to help them. And so they are responsible with communicating to the clients. They’re responsible to presenting to the clients. We give them a package of materials at the end, which include renderings, which include fabrication drawings, which include estimates and all of these things can be used by the community to put together capital campaigns for fundraising or to use for grants. And we try to provide lots of grants. Information as well. So the goal is that these don't sit on a shelf, but hopefully, this is the first step towards implementation.
Denny Spinner:
And you know, I was mayor of a small town as well, engaged with CRE, and just having that asset—it's an aspirational thing that maybe you couldn't even do because of the tight budgets or whatever.
Jessica Potts:
Exactly.
Denny Spinner:
There's a real product here that gives you something to build on, right?
Jessica Potts:
Yes. And people take you seriously, I feel like, when you come with your vision on paper, and you're like, hey, this is what we want to do. What's it going to cost us? What do we have to do to get from here to there? So it's 100% so helpful for rural communities.
Denny Spinner:
And I know that we're in the process of—we're talking about this now in December and about what's coming up. So this process is ongoing as communities are thinking about this. I'm going to ask each of you to kind of chip in on this.
But as other communities that might be nearer to Indiana University or interested in the Rural Placemaking Studio—and I'll get a perspective from all of you. So, Jessica, what would you tell a community that might be considering engaging with rural placemaking at IU?
Jessica Potts:
Do it, one hundred percent. Do it. I mean, even if you have several ideas, and you just need help figuring out what the design's going to be, what you actually want it to look like, or if you're having a hard time putting it on paper, I think do it. I mean, the bigger the network and the more ideas that you bring, the outside ideas, I think that it's going to be helpful to move your community forward.
Denny Spinner:
And Nicole, I know that one of the starting places that—among this work over the last several years is a guide that kind of helps people assess where they are. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Nicole Vasconi:
Yeah, sure. So at rural.indiana.edu, our website, you can find a Community Arts and Culture Guide, which is a really helpful resource to sort of help people answer some of the starting questions they might have before applying for a program like Rural Placemaking Studio, like how do I get maybe a couple of people from my community involved in some culture and arts initiatives? I know there are people in my community who really want to start up something, but how do we get started? So this guide is a sort of how-to, how do you get started? And it was actually started up by my predecessor, Adrian Starnes. So I want to give a lot of credit to him for really bringing all those ideas forward. But it's a really great way to get started if you're just thinking about, I would like to get involved in some initiatives like this and get my community organized. Here's a how-to guide.
Denny Spinner:
Jon, what do you think? As students are thinking about coming into a program like this, maybe from a student perspective, what should they know? And how do you communicate that back to a community?
Jon Racek:
Well, we structure it like a fellowship. So the students will apply for this. And we try to take the students that we feel are going to be most serious and are going to bring the best skills to the process. And so we have very high expectations for the work and for the commitment of the students. It’s a summer position. It takes about eight weeks. But yeah, we treat it very seriously, and hopefully the products will show that work.
Denny Spinner:
And the process is ongoing. So we have an application timeline coming up. Tell us a little bit about where we are in the process. If there's communities that are interested, what's their next steps?
Nicole Vasconi:
Yeah, definitely. So we do have applications open for our next cohort or cycle of the program, which most of it takes place during the summer. There is some stuff we do in the spring. But if you're interested in applying, you can go to our website, which was again rural.indiana.edu. And applications are open until January 17, so you can apply online. You can also find my contact info on there. If you have any questions, you can reach out, and I'd love to talk with you about your ideas and what you're thinking.
Denny Spinner:
Well, Jessica, this is a podcast about stories from rural Hoosiers, and you live this every day. You're here. You’re in Martin County. What are the stories that you could tell? Give us a story that really moved the needle for your folks in this engagement and getting a sense of of the value of where we live? A small community, sometimes, like Jon said, you don't even realize your own assets.
Tell us a story about how you saw eyes open and people said, this is great. This is a value to our community.
Jessica Potts:
Yeah. So I think, honestly, a lot of it was just the downtown. Everyone wants our businesses to succeed downtown. The business owners are very involved in the Main Street group. The cohesive signage, I think, is going to be something that really moves downtown forward. They have signage now that’s on the front of their building that's hard— that you have to be directly looking at their buildings in order to see the sign. It's not going to be sticking out, you know, from the building. So I think that, you know, just the outside perspective and outsiders being excited about their community has really added to the momentum for the downtown community.
Denny Spinner:
Yeah. Again, I'm from a rural community. I grew up in rural Indiana. I've worked for a lot of rural offices. And what this story is telling is there is a value of life in small communities. I think one of the challenges that—you know, after COVID, there were a lot of challenges that came out. But one of the things that COVID did do maybe positively, if there was anything positive out of that, is there was a better sense of community and that we can live and thrive in a rural place. And creating these opportunities for quality of place is something that is really critical for the future lifeblood of the small community.
So as an economic development person in a rural county, how do you forward this out? What's next on the list for you guys? What are you looking forward to? What excites you about what's happening in Martin County?
Jessica Potts:
I think implementing the projects from the placemaking studio. Each community has their own ideas and visions lingering out there, just waiting to get the projects done. It’s always a matter of funding to get the projects implemented. But every community—the City of Loogootee is working on the READI 1.0 project in the downtown park pavilion project, so it's going to be a green space with the pavilion where they can have outdoor music.
The town of Shoals has got several things going on. They’ve got their park expansion, the Overlook Park. A group of individuals in the community are working on it. And Overlook Park is along Highway 50. They're working on putting a mural on, like, an older bathroom, so they're going to work on more of an Instagramable moment there. There's been some new swings put up, so a place where people can pull over when they're coming through Martin County and stop for a while and learn about the community. So they're working on asset mapping there.
The Town of Crane, it's small to some communities, but they've not had a park in the community in a very long time. And a group of people have gotten together there and wrote a Martin County Community Foundation grant and were rewarded some funds. And the community came together and put the park together, so they actually have the park back in place for the Town of Crane. Every little community is working on something, and it's all placemaking because we are competing with the more urban areas, the bigger areas. But you know, every community has something to offer.
Denny Spinner:
Jon and Nicole, what about this program excites you? What fuels you in your work to do this work with other communities? Tell us a little bit about your passion for this type of work.
Nicole Vasconi:
Yeah. Well, the passion is contagious. It's really exciting to see people have so much energy about where they live, and wanting to make it more vibrant, and really emphasize the strengths and the vibrancy that's already there. I love to see how local arts and culture can become part of a place's story and how that storytelling can make it a nicer place to live and visit. So I think it's really interesting.
One of my favorite parts has just being learning more about these places throughout Indiana and learning about the history and who's already there creating culture. And it just makes me feel like I'm part of something really big and exciting. And I especially felt this way in Martin County, but I always feel very welcome in every community I visit. And the relationships that I've created through this have been very fulfilling. So, the people. I know that’s such a stock response sometimes, but the people are great. So that's been fun.
Denny Spinner:
Jon, when this all started, it was a new idea of taking this idea from the work on campus in Bloomington out into the state. How has that fueled you to see this happening?
Jon Racek:
Well, part of the reason I love creative placemaking is it ties up so many interesting things. It ties in history and culture and economic development and social spaces. It's so many things with kind of a small little intervention, right? A mural is a pretty small thing to do in the grand scope of a town or a city, but it can do a lot. And so I love the impact of this stuff that we can do with students who, you know, typically see themselves as not being able to do all that much out in the professional world, that we can do these small little interventions, and it could have real impact in these towns.
Denny Spinner:
And I think one of the things I see also is that a lot of students don't realize how much of an impact they can have right away. You’ve got to wait to do your thing later, or whatever. But in rural communities, there's that opportunity, like, right now to make a significant impact.
Jon Racek:
Yeah. And that doesn't exist in Indy and Bloomington. It's harder to make an impact. It’s harder to move the needle. But in some of these smaller communities where they need this help, you know, it's great to have that impact.
Denny Spinner:
Yeah, I just love the idea of, you know, when the community comes together, I think there is a lot of rallying. And sometimes, rural areas are painted with—like it's all vanilla. But there's a lot of flavor out there.
Jon Racek:
Oh, yeah.
Jessica Potts:
There is, there is.
Nicole Vasconi:
Definitely.
Denny Spinner:
There's a lot of different flavors, that when you actually spend the time to come and look at these rural communities as individual units, it's not a vanilla world out there. There's some really unique and very exciting things happening in these rural communities. And that's why the people are passionate about where their hometowns are.
So I think this is a great opportunity for us to highlight that, to work with the community and do that. We've got just a few more moments left. So Jessica, give us your elevator pitch for “Come to Martin County.” What's there for somebody to come and see?
Jessica Potts:
Absolutely. Come to Martin County and visit our natural assets. If you're needing a slowdown from the busy life, come out and enjoy walking on one of our trails. Enjoy breakfast at Velma's Diner or Corner Cafe, or even Stoll's Amish Buffet. Just come visit us.
Denny Spinner:
Well, we appreciate your time today and all of you that come together for our podcast. This has been a great conversation. We'll have more to come in this conversation, and we'll keep our eyes on what's happening in Martin County and with the Rural Placemaking Studio going forward. So we appreciate your partnership, and we appreciate your time here today, everyone. Thank you for being here.
Jon Racek:
Thank you.
Nicole Vasconi:
Thanks, Denny.
Jessica Potts:
Thank you.
Denny Spinner:
Thank you for joining us today on Our Indiana: Stories from Rural Hoosiers, and we'll see you again next time.
[OUTRO MUSIC]
