Stories

The Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design (CIRD) helps rural communities enhance their quality of life and economic vitality through design. CIRD’s Design Learning Cohort brings together rural community leaders from across the country to connect with each other to share and learn how design can address their particular community’s needs.

CIRD’s August, 2022 local design workshop in Spring Grove, Minnesota coalesced efforts toward a community and cultural space facility reflective of the town’s robust support for the arts and education. The proposed facility will go up across the street from the Spring Grove School and it would literally and figuratively bridge the school and community—a physical manifestation of Spring Grove’s top priority: creating a one-room schoolhouse for the 21st century.

Every local design workshop hosted by the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design (CIRD) starts the same way: with community members rallying around a vision for a brighter future. CIRD’s design workshops offer rural communities the chance to work with a national team of designers, architects, and planners to develop design concepts that can help turn that vision into a reality. With support from the CIRD resource team, local design workshops bring together local residents and leaders from local non-profits, community organizations, and government to develop actionable solutions to a specific design challenge.

CIRD's May 2022 local design workshop in Frederiksted, St. Croix, focused on reviving a historic fish market. Led by local nonprofit Clean Sweep Frederiksted, the workshop is a notable stop along the way to broader community revitalization in this beautiful and historic small town. To celebrate the completion of workshop’s design book, here are some of our favorite photos from Frederiksted’s local design workshop.

CIRD’s May 2022 local design workshop in Frederiksted, St. Croix, focused on reviving and reimagining a historic fish market. But far from being a culminating event or end point, the CIRD workshop is one notable stop along the way to broader community revitalization in this beautiful and historic small town.

The Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design recently partnered with the community of Keene, NH, to reinvigorate an arts corridor initiative that drives broader downtown economic development. And while the arts have long bolstered rural economies, CIRD’s work in Keene comes with a twist. Arts Alive!, a non-profit organization working to sustain the arts community across the Monadnock region, developed a close-knit and diverse project steering committee to partner with CIRD’s local design workshop team. Together they marshaled local resources around the Arts Core concept, aiming to generate an economic development plan that goes way beyond a typical rural arts strategy.

CIRD has been working with the community of Midway, Alabama to transform a shuttered school into a multifaceted community services hub and entrepreneurship center. After engaging remotely, the CIRD team traveled to Midway in early December 2021 for an in-person design workshop with over 70 residents to solidify plans for the Merritt Community Complex.

Learn about CIRD's August 2021 local design workshop hosted by the Pueblo of Laguna after a year-long delay due to COVID-19. The Main Street revitalization project centered on a new community hub and marketplace for artists and food vendors that responds to ongoing community needs and deep historic ties to sacred indigenous land.

After more than 15 years of experience working as an architect in public interest design and community development, Omar Hakeem is celebrating the one-year anniversary of his firm, To Be Done Studio (TBD). Evelyn Immonen, {CIRD Program Manager} spoke to Omar and his colleague, Zain Islam-Hashmi, about the progress of rural design efforts across the country and what TBD Studio has been up to.

The Request for Applications does more than determine which communities CIRD works with: it also lets us learn about what the design needs of rural America are and what is happening on the ground. Read about those needs and more reflections from CIRD Project Manager, Evelyn Immonen.

Partners of Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design (CIRD) across rural America wanted an opportunity to hear from their peers at the intersection of rural planning, design, and ultimately, resilience. The “CIRD in the Time of COVID” webinar sought to provide that very opportunity.

As the Executive Director of the AIR institute, I’m here to tell you a bit about our mission to raise the value of arts and culture in every community, in spite of the global pandemic affecting every aspect of our lives.

Mara Mintzer spoke with the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design about her award-winning work at the intersection of design, education, and community engagement with one overriding theme: youth voices matter, and they matter right now. 1.6 million people have viewed Mintzer’s How Kids Can Help Design Cities TED Talk. We suggest a listen, too, as it buttresses CIRD’s recent conversation with Mara. And don’t let “cities” get in the way; Mara notes the utter rural applicability of her approach.

Meet Alyce Brown, a CIRD community leader with a big vision for the small town of Entiat, WA. Working with local organizations and stakeholder groups, Brown plans to transform the town into a tourism destination that provides year-round recreational services to visitors and long-term prosperity to the region.

Meet Calvin Phelps, a CIRD cohort community leader who is renovating a former community jail into an arts-centered space. By preserving the jail, the soon-to-be Pike School of Art will give new life to the community’s rich culture and history.

A CIRD Learning Cohort Summit participant returns to her youthful stomping grounds ready to learn about rural design. What did she find out?

Nearly half of the 2019 CIRD cohort communities identified downtown development as their primary design challenge.

A strong and vibrant Main Street is quintessential to the core of small-town America. It also proved to be a priority for many of this year’s CIRD Learning Cohort. Learn more about why cohort participants feel so passionately about improving Main Street in their communities.

How do we connect food security with rural design? Katie Starr, Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellow at the Housing Assistance Council, shares her experiences weaving the two areas together as part of her fellowship work.

This piece is a reflection from CIRD team member Evelyn Immonen on her experience at the Rural Generation Summit 2019, and the opinions are her own.