Citizens Institute for Rural Design

Location: Nationwide

Website: rural-design.org

Residents in America’s small towns and rural communities care deeply about the future of their towns and value their uniqueness, strong sense of community, and special places. However, they increasingly face urgent challenges: How can they add jobs and support local businesses? How do they create a positive future for their kids? How can they honor and protect local character and history? How do they use limited financial, human, and natural resources wisely?

Developing locally-driven solutions to these challenges is critical to the long-term vitality of these communities, and the arts and design can play a powerful role in this process. Across the country, community leaders and residents are coming together to tackle these challenges and to find creative strategies that address:

How to build strong economies and grow jobs; Where to locate new growth or redevelop older areas; How to design efficient transportation systems; How to protect the community’s historic and culturally significant resources.

Rural design is an important tool for rural communities to build upon existing assets and improve the way a community looks, its quality of life, and its economic viability. However, few rural communities have access to design assistance or the expertise to tackle these challenges on their own.

The Citizens' Institute on Rural Design™ (CIRD) provides communities access to the resources they need to convert their own good ideas into reality. CIRD works with communities with populations of 50,000 or less, and offers annual competitive funding to as many as four small towns or rural communities to host a two-and-a-half day community design workshop. With support from a wide range of design, planning and creative placemaking professionals, the workshops bring together local leaders from non-profits, community organizations, and government to develop actionable solutions to the community's pressing design challenges. The community receives additional support through webinars, conference calls, and web-based resources.

Established in 1991 as Your Town: the Citizens' Institute on Rural Design™, CIRD has convened more than 70 workshops in all regions of the country, empowering residents to leverage local assets for the future in order to build better places to live, work, and play. Initially a partnership among the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the State University of New York (SUNY) at Syracuse, the program was managed by Richard Hawks and Shelley Mastran from 1991-2012.

CIRD remains one of the NEA's key design leadership initiatives and is currently conducted in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Project for Public Spaces, Inc., along with the Orton Family Foundation and CommunityMatters® Partnership.

Campaign to Protect Rural England

Location: England, UK

Website: www.cpre.org.uk

We believe a beautiful, thriving countryside is important for everyone, no matter where they live. Millions of town and city dwellers recharge their batteries with a walk or a bike ride in the local Green Belt, spend weekends and holidays in our National Parks, or enjoy fresh local produce. People who live in rural areas keep our countryside beautiful and productive.

The countryside is unique, essential, precious and finite – and it’s in danger. Every year, a little more is lost forever to urban sprawl, new roads, housing and other developments. Rural shops and services are closing, and increasingly intensive farming is changing the character of the countryside. Climate change, too, will have serious impacts on the rural environment.

We work locally and nationally to stand up for the countryside: to protect it from the threats it faces, and to shape its future for the better.

CPRE has been standing up for the countryside for over 80 years. In that time, we’ve seen some remarkable successes. We’ve helped win protection as National Parks for some of our most remarkable landscapes, from the Lake District to the South Downs. We’ve helped to influence and apply planning laws that have, against the odds, preserved the special beauty and character of the English countryside.

Sustainable Northwest

Location: Oregon and Washington

Website: www.sustainablenorthwest.org

We envision a thriving Northwest with strong communities, vibrant economies, and healthy and productive landscapes.

We are a non-profit organization based in Portland, Oregon that bridges multiple stakeholders to solve natural resource management issues in rural communities. Founded in 1994, Sustainable Northwest is a pioneer in solving problems through collaboration and has grown into one of the most trusted organizations working at the intersection of the environment, economy, and community.

Sustainable Northwest brings people, ideas, and innovation together so that nature, local economies, and rural communities can thrive.

Our work results in restored ecosystems, living wage jobs, and better relationships among diverse groups of people.

We work with communities to innovate and solve critical natural resource challenges. Our unique approach is to listen, learn, build trust, and be invested in the long term success of the communities and region we serve.

Solutions are drawn from local knowledge and are crafted in collaboration with diverse groups and serve to promote innovation in business, renewable energy, and natural resource management.

We work with rural leaders, small business owners, federal and state level policy makers and agencies, landowners, tribes, farmers, ranchers, conservationists, and environmentalists across the West.