The Radically Rural summit is back. The annual event brings together those who love rural life, but also want to solve small-town challenges. Radically Rural is a grassroots movement founded in 2018 in Keene that connects people who are passionate about small-town life with those who are pioneering innovative solutions to common problems. It’s back for 2025 with new ideas and new solutions. To preview the summit are Executive Director Julianna Dodson and Lillian Chase, program and development coordinator, both from the Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship and part of the planning team for the summit.
By Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew
This article has been edited for length and clarity.
Melanie Plenda:
Julianna, can you tell us a bit about the background of Radically Rural and its connection to the Hannah Grimes Center?
Julianna Dodson:
The Hannah Grimes Center started as the marketplace on Main Street about 28 years ago, and has continually evolved to kind of meet the moment that we're in as a region and to meet needs that we have through innovation, collaboration and gathering together.
About 18 years ago, they started an annual event called Connect and met annually, and it worked really well for our region to kind of come together and shape and share ideas and increase connections, share solutions and making sure folks weren't duplicating efforts, things like that.
When The Keene Sentinel got involved in that effort in 2016, the event just continued to grow. At one of the events, someone stood up during an idea jam, and said, “Rural places shouldn't be kept out of being able to host large gatherings just because we don't have large convention centers. We should be able to use our whole downtown as a convention center.” And everyone was like, “We should do that.” So a group got together and really did some brainstorming around what that could look like.
Melanie Plenda:
How has it evolved over the years?
Julianna Dodson:
We had two years before the pandemic of hosting in downtown Keene, and it was hugely successful. Then when the pandemic hit, we moved everything online. Then they received a Northern Border Regional Commission grant to hire a Radically Rural director, and that's where I came on the scene.
When I started, we had our first hybrid year, and from that point forward, having someone who is dedicated to this work, we were able to actually expand to year-round programming through virtual roundtables. Over time, we have also evolved to include small town trips every year where we visit one small town and learn all about them and what they're doing and make what makes them unique, what models they have to offer, what challenges they're grappling with. We've also started last year with an annual correspondence to Congress to help communicate some of the needs that we're hearing about from the grassroots community that we steward.
I would say also, I think what has evolved the most, in my view, is the relationships in the community, which gets stronger and stronger every year, and that has really allowed us to individually and in groups, kind of customize our support relationally and with connections to resources.
Melanie Plenda:
Lillian, tell us about the theme this year, which is “resonance,” and how that will play out.
Lillian Chase:
After last year's summit, based on some feedback from our advisory group, we knew we wanted to do some radical imagination exercises and just look at the stories we're telling about rural communities — and if we could have a perfect rural community, what it would look like and how we could get there. So we started by finding a partner for that work, and we started working with the Resonance Network. They're going to be speaking at several of our sessions
They explained to us kind of what their name means, and this idea that it's a single force that makes a single vibration something greater. We loved that because it resonated with us. We thought that's what we do at Radically Rural. We take a single idea or thought or model, and we bounce it off everyone else in the room to create a solution, to create ideas that can spark rural innovation across the country.
This year, we're diving into that with more cross-sector collaboration than ever. We really want people in public health to be able to bounce ideas off of people in the arts and see what creative solutions can come from.
Melanie Plenda:
Lillian, what’s new this year at the summit?
Lillian Chase:
More cross-sector collaboration than ever. Our Wednesday and Thursday sessions are all going to touch on more than one track. So it might be the arts, it might be clean energy, it might be land, but it's going to be multiple of those every single time.
The other new thing that we're doing is adding a day, so Tuesday, the first day of the summit, is going to be focused on staying in your track, collaborating, making connections with people who are doing similar work to you, so that you can have those bonds and a place to start before you dive into more cross sector collaboration.
We're having field trips. We're having track specific sessions. One of the really cool things we're going to do is our Land and Community track is going to Yellowbud Farm in Massachusetts. They're going to talk with the folks that are farming there and just have a chance to really kind of be immersed in the agriculture and the ideas behind the things that are going to be on panels that we're going to talk about in the next few days.
Melanie Plenda:
Julianna, what kind of an impact do you think the summit has had over the years?
Lillian Chase:
This is a fun one, because I am 100% certain that I have not even remotely been able to keep track of all of the impacts and all the mycelium under the soil that has just spread like wildfire. But there are a couple of really tangible things that I can point to. We've had other people start conferences, replicating Radically Rural, and that's been really fun, because we just like to share. So we’re like, “Take everything.” For our programs, we share them freely with anyone who wants to use them and replicate them and change them.
My favorite part, honestly, is that people have become really good friends through this, and they connect during the year. They support each other during the year. I personally have at least three of my best voice memo friends through Radically Rural, and it's just been delightful to see how it's grown and strengthened over the years.
Melanie Plenda:
Lillian, who comes to Radically Rural? How do they find out about it?
Lillian Chase:
We like to say that anybody who hears a problem and wants to solve it comes to Radical Rural — people with that spark of “I could contribute.” Those are the kind of people that come, and then obviously people who love their rural communities. That's why we get together — to celebrate rural, to solve problems for rural areas. So if you live, work or recreate in rural areas, Radically Rural is really the place for you to come meet your people, and people find out about it at this point from previous attendance.
Melanie Plenda:
Julianna, what do you hope people take away from attending the summit?
Julianna Dodson:
I would say two things. The first one is something else that we haven't done and that we're doing this year is an Education track, and so I'm really hoping that folks can kind of come together from different perspectives as educators and really kind of like work on issues together.
Then the second thing I would say is we've always been known as very solutions-based, upbeat, positive. As one of our founders, Mary Ann Kristiansen, would say, “No wringing of the hands, let's actually move forward.” That hasn't changed. However, I would say as we've matured as programming and as we've grown over time, we are more interested, not in what could be considered like low-hanging fruit, we're more interested in really grasping at the roots.
Every year we've gotten more and more kind of intentional in addressing how entangled everything really is, ecologically, economically, socially. And that's one of the reasons that we have more sessions that are cross-pollinating this year, and why we're kind of bringing up topics that we really haven't before.
Melanie Plenda:
And Lillian, where do people go if they want more information about this?
Lillian Chase:
Go to Radicallyrural.org and you can check out our agenda there. You can sort by track. You can get your tickets there. Definitely go to our website.
Melanie Plenda:
So interesting. Julianna and Lillian, thank you for joining us today.
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