The popular Radically Rural summit grew out of a desire to connect people who are passionate about small-town life with those who are pioneering interesting solutions to common problems. The summit — held every year in Keene — returns Sept. 24, with a new slate of sessions and solutions. Here to discuss what’s in store for this year's conference is Radically Rural Director Julianna Dodson.

By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Melanie Plenda:

Julianna, can you give us a brief history of Radically Rural, how it came to be, and who is the summit for?

Julianna Dodson:

Whether you're in a rural or urban setting, or somewhere in-between, how people, culture and a society evolve is typically a whole tapestry of things. So you might have one person that starts an initiative, another person who carries it forward, someone who kind of iterates or evolves it, and before long you kind of just completely lose track of the threads and where they started and where they stopped.

Radically Rural was kind of like that, where it was this natural evolution of so many different efforts that had evolved over time, starting with the Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship back in 1997, where our founder and executive director, Marianne Christensen, started a marketplace for locally made goods and locally grown goods, because there wasn't anything like that around here at the time. And over time, we just kind of kept encountering new challenges and found creative ways to solve them. So as the marketplace was being run, we realized we needed business skills, our makers and growers need business skills. Let's start some programming to help them. As we go along, we realized we need to advocate for the needs of small businesses. We need to advocate for the needs of rural communities. It just kind of kept going and kept going.

We have an amazing relationship with our local newspaper, The Keene Sentinel, and in 2017 we had been running an annual event called Connect, which brought people from all over the region together to shape and share ideas. That was going so well for us, and we thought, “Can we do that on a national scale?” 

So here comes another thread. We have a company in our region called Badger, which makes skincare products that was started right here in Gilsum, and the owner, Bill Whyte, uses a particular method of developing ideas. So the Sentinel, Hannah Grimes, and Bill got together, and they kind of figured out how they could take these seeds of ideas to something real. That's when Radically Rural was born. 

Melanie Plenda:

What do you think makes Radically Rural unique? 

Julianna Dodson:

What I think makes it unique is that I don’t know of another summit in America that focuses on rural issues that is not also more specifically focused on one particular sector or one particular area or one political party constituency. So what I love about Radically Rural is that we are free to be responsive. We are free to meet the needs of our national rural community because we aren't kind of restricted to any one of those things.

I was actually just writing my opening comments to the summit today and really just inspiring myself while I did it. I was just kind of describing how we all in our lives have the things that we think, “If everyone could just blank” or “if the world would just blank” — everything would be better. We all have our things right? Whether it's local news and local media or whether it's education or health, or whatever it might be. We all have that thing that we think is the key to thriving communities. And that's the point — that we need all of it. 

These are all puzzle pieces that come together and fit together. So what I think makes Radically Rural unique is that we are a place, a primary place, where rural communities can bring these puzzle pieces together and fit them together. When we do that, we really weave a beautiful tapestry. I think what that does is it helps us to serve our local communities better when we can do that.

As an example, I was just speaking to one of our local Rotary Clubs, and I was describing how this platform can benefit our local region, even though we have people from all over North America who come. One of our local business owners came up to me afterward, and he said, “We really should use this platform to bring some people together who have gone through a big infrastructure overhaul in their downtown, because Keene is about to embark on a three-year infrastructure project, and the downtown businesses are nervous about being able to stay in business during that time.”

This is what this platform is for. We can put it out there to our national network and say, who's gone through something like this before. What did you do? Bring all your ideas. We don't need to re-create the wheel. We can pull those ideas and resources and connections together to then be a part of the solution, because everything that we're doing well in our region, we can share. 

Melanie Plenda:

How has Radically Rural grown over the years? And what do you attribute that growth to? 

Julianna Dodson:

It has grown to some extent, in numbers, although we've stayed pretty consistently between 500 and 600 attendees every year. It's grown in the sense that the number of states represented each year and the length that people are traveling to get here. But, in my opinion, the growth that we're aiming for — because we're really not aiming for exponential growth in numbers — is the growth in how the event is cultivated, the intention that's put into it, the quality of the programming, the quality of the outcomes and the impacts that this makes in our world. That’s the growth that’s most important to me, and in that way, our growth is off the charts, because every single year we hear more about what this is doing for folks and their communities, and it's getting to the point where it's impossible to even trace the threads and find out how it's impacted. 

We have a lot of folks that have made connections that have really benefited their work. They've gotten ideas that have started entire initiatives in their regions, including our region too. We have, for example, hosted several social practice artists in our region because of a session that was done on social practice art. And this year, in one of our art sessions, we are literally making a quilt together and talking about social practice art. So that quilt is sort of going to be a representation of our theme this year, which is “reweaving the social fabric.” The more we can find ways to bridge, the more we can find ways to come together, the better off we all are. 

Melanie Plenda:

Can you tell us about some of the highlights of the different tracks? Who are your speakers and what will they be talking about?

Julianna Dodson:

It is very difficult for me to just pick a couple of things.

One is a shameless plug, one that Hannah Grimes is going to be leading, and it is in the entrepreneurship track called “Can You Create a New Economic Sector? Lessons Learned from Trying.” Essentially, in the evolution of Radically Rural, we've continued to add different aspects of our programming. We've launched something called “Radically Rural Biotech.” It comes from that same natural evolution that I mentioned at the beginning of this call, where we decide, “This is bothering us. What can we do about it?” And what was kind of bothering us was like, rural communities don't exist only to be extracted from. They are generative. We have brilliant people living in our communities that can create, that can grow new things, so we started thinking about it, and because of some connections we had in our world, we realized that rural areas are actually perfect places to host biotech. And biotech is such a sector that is needed for now and for our future. But what we're discovering as we've tried to cultivate that sector locally is there are some missing pieces of the puzzle. There's funding gaps. Yes, there’s wealth in rural communities, but how are we going to get those investors comfortable with investing in something like biotech?

It's not just about biotech. It's about an experiment of whether this model can work for other things too. One of our sessions is about that, and I think it's going to be really, really interesting and highly relevant to every rural community or small community. 

I guess another one I will pull out that's been really popular is we have one in our Main Street track about attracting, retaining and engaging young people in your community. We have a wild number of people wanting to attend that session because that’s so important for small communities. The goal isn’t just “to grow up and just get out.” There is such a high level of value to a rural place, and what can we do to cultivate and engage young people in a way that causes them to want to stay or maybe move back some day. It’s sort of  a bit of changing the narrative that you’re not failing if you stay.

Melanie Plenda:

Julianna, to sum everything up — why should people go to Radically Rural? What can they get from it?

Julianna Dodson:

I think everyone would have their own answer to that. Mine would be how people feel when they leave is one of the most important things. For all of us, no matter what industry we're working in, no matter what our jobs are, the pace can be relentless in modern-day life. I think a lot of people are really burned out, and they're like,” I just can't fit one more thing in my schedule, like that just seems impossible.” To me, Radically Rural when you go, when you experience it beginning to end, how you feel when you leave is inspired, joyful, hopeful, connected. You have tools and resources at your disposal, and I really feel like it's so much wind in your sails so that you can do whatever you're doing better.

I'd say anyone in the state of New Hampshire should come really. I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to just be given an injection of new ideas, new energy, inspiration and joy.

Melanie Plenda:

Thank you for joining us Radically Rural Director Julianna Dodson and good luck with the summit.

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