Author: Mia McGill

Step aside, Paris: New Bedford, Massachusetts is the new city of love. Residents created a city-wide letter-writing campaign that inspired an internationally successful documentary.

Care and community love are at the heart of Austin, Minnesota’s Parenting Resource Center (PRC), who continue to meet community needs through their recent merger with the Welcome Center.

Bringing arts and cultural enrichment to nearly 1,300 people living in their Minnesota town, the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center is a small organization with big goals.

The Matthews, originally known as Matthew’s Opera House, opened in 1906, just shy of 30 years after the Black Hills Gold Rush. The Matthews still stands in its original location on Main Street in Spearfish, South Dakota. Since its inception, the building has gone through various program changes to better serve its community.

Pangea World Theater works hard year-round to create a space that connects people from all backgrounds and builds a covenant with the surrounding Lake Street community.

Rural communities are often misunderstood and underserved. Organizations like the Region Five Development Commission (R5DC) exist to fill that gap and improve economic development in rural areas. Learn more about how this organization is co-developing strategies to improve quality of life for all residents in Central Minnesota.

A space is truly of the community when it is shaped by the needs of the people it serves. The Sitting Bull Visitor Center in Fort Yates, North Dakota, the tribal headquarters of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, is recognizing and addressing its community’s need for holistic education around food sovereignty through their proposed Open Kitchen. This initiative complements their rich portfolio of offerings related to Indigenous knowledge and tradition.

Sisseton, South Dakota is a unique place. This rural town of 2,400 is located on the Lake Traverse Reservation: about half the town is Native American, and the other half is mostly white. But it is not only the residential makeup of the Sisseton that makes it unique. It is the survival and persistence of art in the area, and new movements that are bridging a historically separated community.

Community reading programs can inspire discussion, connection, and community—and in the case of author, educator, and Russian literature scholar Andrew D. Kaufman, a new book.