Build Community
Just what is community? It’s a feeling of fellowship with others, because of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. It’s a place where we can belong. For me, small-town people are a community. We have many similar interests: knowing our neighbors and looking out for them, shopping at our local businesses to support our friends,…
Blue Collar Career Fair
Creating a new workforce solution You’ve told us you’d like your kids to either stay in the community or come back after being in the world a little bit. Here’s one way to get them interested in your businesses and community. Let them experience your business. Don’t just preach at a one-day event and discuss…
Empty buildings in small towns
Why are these buildings empty and not fixed? People say “Downtown is dead. Why aren’t there more stores?” Take a good look at the empty buildings. If they were maintained and available to use your town would have a better downtown with a place for more businesses. There are many reasons like expensive code-compliance issues…
Attracting Remote Workers
You have what they want As young families come home to small towns, they are often remote workers. Mainstreet.Org says at the end of the day, the strength of this trend will be determined by how communities position themselves to leverage this growing interest in rural and small towns. What can you do to position…
From one boomer to another
I’m a boomer, born between 1946 and 1964. Many of us boomers are past retirement age or close to it. That doesn’t mean we are retiring! Many are still working in some capacity, or active in our communities through volunteering. We’re used to doing things a certain way, following an old hierarchy and bureaucracy that…
Tourism as Economic Development
Tourism as economic development makes sense. Get people from outside of your community to come visit your natural resources, your events, and your community. Have them shop in town, eat at the restaurants, get gas in town, and stay overnight in your hotels, and that will stimulate your economy. We can all see that picture…
We gave up planning the old way for a Brendan Hoffman exhibit and visit
Webster City, Iowa hosted an international photojournalist, Brendan Hoffman, in residency at the Daily Freeman Journal, the local paper. A town of 8,000 people managed to take a 6 week free class on Using Photography to Tell Your Stories, view an exhibition of War In Ukraine, and personally visit with the photojournalist Brendan Hoffman and…
Downtown placemaking can be simple and cheap
How often do you go somewhere and realize you didn’t even ‘see’ much along the route? Until something changes. Then everyone sees it. Candee Brossman from the Woodward Arts and Theatre Council shared this story with us. She attended Becky’s presentation at the Oklahoma Arts Council Conference, where Becky talked about the value of cleaning…
Driving Positive Change in Rural – we can help
SaveYour.Town has been instrumental in driving positive change in rural communities. You’re interested in the work Becky McCray and I do, you read our newsletters, you’ve seen us in your towns and on stage, you watch our videos and webinars. As you plan for 2024, I’d like to share a bit more about the various…
Lessons from an Idea Friendly Gift Shop in a Small Town
One of the chapters in my upcoming workbook is about using crafters as your next set of entrepreneurs. Stephanie from Canada shared her crafter entrepreneurial story with us! You don’t have to go it alone. Fourteen years ago Stephanie and her sister moved to a small town that had lots of summer tourists but no…