‘This Is What We Train For’
During our five years of travel around the country, my husband Jim and I often found that artists who revealed the perspectives on their hometowns were the people who stopped us in our tracks.
Arts
79 posts
How Artists Build the Spirit of a Town
During our travels to towns around the U.S., Jim Fallows and I have come across several artist-in-residence programs, for example in Ajo, Arizona; Eastport, Maine; and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
An Artist-in-Residence Creates a Sense of Place
We’ve seen artist-in-residence programs in a number of the towns we’ve visited. The first was in Eastport, Maine, where we ran into Richelle Gribble, a young artist based in Los Angeles, whom I…
Photos Can Trigger Change in a Town
In 2008, National Geographic photographer Jodi Cobb and photographer and former Second Lady, Tipper Gore, talked about the role of photography at the then Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The…
A River of Words in Pittsburgh
As we've traveled around the country with our American Futures and Our Towns projects since 2013, my husband, Jim, and I have evolved from being skeptics to evangelists about the impact of public arts on communities.
How Art Can Renew a Community
This is No. 2 in a series of three videos from our friends at New America about the realities of community revitalization and economic recovery in the much-discussed Industrial Heartland of…
The Library That’s Also an Art Gallery
A "hub of Winston-Salem in touch with the people."
Flying Down East
Headed back to Eastport
How a City Talks About Itself: Sioux Falls
In June 2013, my husband, Jim, and I first landed our small, single-engine Cirrus propeller airplane at the main airport, Joe Foss Field, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It was the first…
Sioux Falls is Ready for Tom Hanks
A year ago, America’s Favorite Actor™, Tom Hanks, triggered a series of reports on TV and in the Argus Leader newspaper in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He did so with one little…
The American Sense of Place
An update: Reactions from readers and significant local-renewal developments
The Reinvention of Danville’s Downtown: Part 1
A factory town coming back
A Community Finding a Path Forward
The civic-renewal mix in Angola, Indiana
‘Our Erie’ Tells Its Story
As we’ve been working away on our book based on our “American Futures” travels over the past four years, my wife Deb and I have increasingly come to think of Erie, Pennsylvania,…
All Progress Is Local: New Year’s Notes From Around the Country
New Year's Notes from Around the Country
The Treasures of Birmingham
For almost a century, the local library has guarded its city's history.