This Rural Arts and Culture Map presents new perspectives from rural America, with a focus on rural youth, rural-urban exchange, and a sustaining interest in the changing face of rural America, including the next generation, and their membership in diverse ethnic and cultural communities.

Most importantly, this community is driven not by any single organization, but by the people themselves. With opportunities to share video, audio, photography, and text, we give full agency to an audience ready to become active participants in a mission to create new rural narratives. We hope this map will become a manifestation of direct, local experience; a digital tool that transcends itself; a meeting point for conversation and shared ground; and a foundation through which to unite and motivate rural citizens across the country.

This initiative acknowledges that powerful campaigns for equity and social change emerge from cultural imperatives. Artists and arts practitioners are often grassroots innovators and adept partners in media campaigns. The Rural Arts and Culture map gives a compelling voice, and a new avenue of communication, to a wide range of rural issues. Please join in.

The Rural Arts and Culture Map is coordinated by Art of the Rural, in collaboration with Appalshop, Feral Arts, and the M12 Art Collective.

This work has received generous support from the National Rural Assembly, as well as a Rural Digital Advocacy Grant, an opportunity provided by the Rural Policy Action Partnership with funding from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.