We’re thrilled to announce John Davis of Warroad, Minnesota as the 2025 recipient of the Peter Capell Award for Midwestern Creativity & Entrepreneurship.
For more than 35 years, Davis has been one of rural America’s most visionary arts leaders. His work has centered around weaving arts into the fabric of small communities, connecting economic impact with innovation.
Davis began his career founding the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center, where he launched programs like the Great American Think-Off, a national philosophy competition that continues to draw participants from across the country.
During his time as Executive Director of Lanesboro Arts, he spent nearly two decades reimagining the entire town as an Arts Campus. Under his guidance, Lanesboro became the first small town in the nation to adopt a citywide arts campus proclamation, was named one of the top 12 Small Town Artplaces in America, and saw more than $3.3 million in investment in its downtown and creative infrastructure.
Most recently, as the first Executive & Artistic Director of Warroad RiverPlace in northern Minnesota, Davis has shepherded the development and activation of a 20,000 sq. ft. arts, culture, and event center—a $20 million project with a mission of bringing the community together through innovative access to arts and culture.
Across every chapter of his career, Davis has championed rural creativity, cross-sector collaboration, and the belief that small towns deserve big artistic ideas. In celebration of his efforts, he has received a $2,500 unrestricted cash award from Arts Midwest.
About the Peter Capell Award
Established in 2022 to honor the legacy of longtime Arts Midwest Board member and former Board Chair, the Peter Capell Award for Midwestern Creativity & Entrepreneurship recognizes individuals whose work exemplifies entrepreneurial thinking, creative accomplishments, and a commitment to community.
This year’s award focused on individuals based in Minnesota. Details about next year’s award will be available in 2026.
Peter Capell, longtime Arts Midwest Board member and former Board Chair“John’s work using the arts and creativity as an economic engine in small towns and demonstrating the positive impact of these initiatives in our rural communities is a true example of the values, initiatives and results this award is meant to support.”
Q&A: John Davis on Cultivating Rural Creativity
You’ve spent your career showing how rural communities can be national leaders in creativity. What led you down this path?
After graduating from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, I knew I wanted to live in rural America. I bought an abandoned farm outside New York Mills, Minnesota.
I really didn’t have a plan other than wanting to be involved in the arts. I painted barns to make money and listened to farmers, community members, senior citizens about their hopes and dreams for the future.
As it turns out, there was a yearning for the arts, just no access in a small rural community. I wanted to change that narrative.
So that’s what led me down this path. Listening.
Your motto is “the audience is everyone.” How has that shaped your leadership?
I came to my philosophy of “the audience is everyone” when I started working in New York Mills to renovate the first brick building in town into a cultural center and start an artist residency program. It seemed obvious that in a town of about 1,000 people, it was critical to reach everyone.
That’s when a friend gave me a toy plastic tractor and I had my ah-ha moment. The tractor would be the logo for the organization. The mission: Cultivate the arts.
Cultivation takes time. The day-to-day challenge was simply how to make art, culture and creativity relevant in everyday people’s lives. Do that with your programming, and you have your buy in and your audience.
You’ve partnered with beef councils, veterans groups, senior centers, civic government and more. How do you approach bringing such different groups into the arts?
Sometimes it’s as straightforward as having a cup of coffee and starting a dialogue. It’s really not even about having an “arts conversation.” It’s more important to listen and learn how to make arts, culture and creativity relevant in people’s lives.
This can mean having conversations about the arts honoring veterans, or how the arts can help solve civic challenges. Or, showing the value of the arts as a tool for economic development, rural narrative uplift and positive publicity. Or, engaging and cultivating the creativity of young people.
It’s all about inviting people to share ideas. Nontraditional partnerships expand your audience!
Transforming a town into an arts campus or opening a $20 million cultural center takes long-term vision. What helps you stay focused?
For me it’s really not about focus, it’s about being patient and planting seeds of ideas.
It took 7 years for the Lanesboro Arts Campus vision to become a shared vision, and 15 years from concept to City Council proclamation declaring the entire community an Arts Campus.
In Warroad, it took guided hard hat tours of a 20,000 sq ft. facility under construction with civic organizations, teachers, school children, farmers and business owners to ask for their ideas for programming in order to get buy-in and to help create that shared vision.
Sometimes it just takes time to cultivate unique ideas that can spark community engagement and narrative shift. The Poetry Parking Lot in Lanesboro is one example. We replaced ordinary parking signage with regional poetry, solving a civic challenge and connecting visitor parking to downtown businesses.
What’s inspiring you lately?
In September of 2025 Warroad RiverPlace culminated a one-year rural/urban partnership with Mixed Blood Theater who created a play by, for, with and about the people and cultures of Warroad. We had three sold out performances with dialog in Spanish and English.
In addition, we just hosted a “Festival of Cultures” with 12 different cultures represented through food, music, storyboards and dance. Cultures represented included Laos, the Philippines, Cuba, Mexico, Norway, South Africa, Venezuela, Native America, Haiti, Canada, Puerto Rico and Nicaragua.
We had no idea if this event would work, however we had 50 people waiting in line for our doors to open, and over 450 attendees for the 3-hour event. (Warroad’s population is 1,983 for context.)
Two Laotian elders who were not planning on performing spontaneously took the stage to perform traditional Laotian music and dance. Multiple generations posed for selfies in front of their food and cultural booths. The definition of inspiring!