SPOTLIGHT: Up Home with Ouita Michel

Chef Ouita worked with acclaimed Kentucky filmmaker Harrison Witt to highlight the connections between food and family through stories.  It’s a love letter to restaurants, farmers, chefs, artists and others that contribute to and enjoy Kentucky’s rich culinary tradition.

SPOTLIGHT: Waymakers Collective

Waymakers Collective strives to sustain creative practice, land, livelihoods, and dialogue across neighborhoods and disciplines. They envision an Appalachia that supports the joy, imagination, and hopes of our artists, activists, and culture bearers.

SPOTLIGHT: AIC’s Alliance for Response Initiative, Toolkit and Forums

Launched in 2003, the Alliance for Response helps connect and build strategic partnerships between emergency managers and cultural institutions, identify allies to develop local assistance networks, engage networks, and find support to sustain local disaster networks.

SPOTLIGHT: ARPC’s Cycle the Arts

Apalachee Regional Planning Council’s Cycle the Arts partners with RideOn, COCA and LovetoRide Florida Challenge to create a new cycling experience in Tallahassee, Florida.

SPOTLIGHT: MHDC’s Self-Help Housing Program

Milford Housing Development Corporation (MHDC) makes the dream of becoming a homeowner a reality through sweat equity and financing options.

SPOTLIGHT: NJIT’s Creative Placemaking Land Usage Workshop

New Jersey Institute of Technology’s (NJIT) Hub offers a full-day workshop that focuses on utilizing the Creative Placemaking process for planning for land usage.

SPOTLIGHT: Oregon's Sustainable Coastal Tourism and Outdoor Recreation Program

Oregon's Sustainable Coastal Tourism and Outdoor Recreation Program works with communities and companies to help them utilize a triple bottom line operational framework to help them, and their communities succeed.

SPOTLIGHT: SEDCOR’s Latino Microenterprise Development Program

The Latino Microenterprise Development Program in Oregon’s Willamette Valley helps participants master the knowledge and skills necessary to establish, grow, and sustain a business for long-term success, profitability, and self-sufficiency.

SPOTLIGHT: NeighborWorks Sacramento’s NeighborsCare Program

NeighborWorks Sacramento launched an initiative to work alongside local organizations and business to provide direct resources and support to underrepresented communities as a collaborative effort.

Downtown Bracket Challenge

The Downtown Bracket Challenge delivers a process to support shared community visions implemented in the short term as a tangible outcome, but with the potential to help communities visualize permanent installations as part of a longer-term effort and vision.

Growing Community Gardens

Community gardens promote fresh food access, improved mental health, healthy dietary habits and community building. In addition to connecting outdoor, food and health sectors, they can also be creative spaces for people to gather and share ideas.

Stories of Community Food Work in Appalachia

The Appalachian Foodshed Project uses oral histories and digital spaces to foster community foodway growth through storytelling and learning.

Sidewalk Subway

Inspired by subway and metro maps from cities across the world, this project interprets the walking tour routes into subway lines with color coded markings on the downtown sidewalks, including ‘stops’ at destinations, connecting both local residents and tourists with local businesses.

Redevelopment for Affordable Housing

Hazard, Kentucky’s Housing Development Alliance partnered with city government to creatively repurpose unused and frequently vandalized property into affordable housing with a creative twist.

Healthcare and Rural Placemaking

Creating rural communities where people want to live, work and play is vitally important to a community’s health.

Building Community Through Broadband

Rural communities are growing connected and more livable thanks to private and government-led broadband efforts to increase infrastructure.

Philanthropy and Rural Innovation

Partnerships between rural communities and philanthropic entities are fundamental to kickstarting innovation and achieving long-term improvements across sectors in underserved rural areas.

SPOTLIGHT: Rural Voices Magazine

Each issue of HAC’s Rural Voices magazine focuses on a single topic important to rural communities, with subjects ranging from housing for older rural residents to the future of housing finance to citizen-led design.

SPOTLIGHT: Somerset Grist Mill and Maine Grains

Two Skowhegan, Maine residents partnered to turn a county jail into a gristmill that boosts the grain economy and transformed a deteriorated property.

SPOTLIGHT: The Women’s Rural Entrepreneurial Network

Powered by rural women, WREN is committed to the mission of supporting better lives and livelihoods through education, economic development and community engagement in the North Country of New Hampshire.