A digital advocacy webinar featuring: - Matthew Fluharty, Director, The Art of the Rural - Rita O'Connell, Communications Director, Taos Health Systems, Inc. - Joyce Hospodar, Manager, Health Systems Development, Center for Rural Health, Zuckerman College of Public Health, University of Arizona

1. Digital Advocacy
Webinar Series
A Connected Center:
Bringing Communities Online
Our panelists: Matthew Fluharty, Executive Director
The Art of the Rural
Rita O’Connell, Taos Health Systems
Joyce Hospodar, University of Arizona Center for Rural Health
Southwest Rural Policy Network
Our moderator: Marty Newell, Center for Rural Strategies
Funding from
July 31, 2013 2:00pm ET

2. Q & A will be conducted through
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How we’ll spend this next hour
together:
 GotoWebinar tech overview
 Introductions
 Presentations

3. GotoWebinar Tips:
 This webinar will be recorded and made available
on the RuralXChange website this week.
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4. asthe
The Rural Arts and Culture Map
Matthew Fluharty: Executive Director, Art of the Rural
Rachel Beth Rudi and Savannah Barrett, Project Contributors

5. The Rural Arts and Culture Map:
Collaborators

6. Mission: to create a map that becomes a manifestation of
direct, local experience; a digital tool that transcends itself;
a meeting point for conversation and shared ground; and a
foundation through which to unite and motivate rural
citizens across the country.

9. Place-Based Digital Storytelling
Across Disciplines, Sectors,
and Regions
Our Collaborators:
Artists, Citizens, & Policymakers
Local Communities
Regional Organizations
University Departments and Programs
State and National Entities

10. We believe digital media can collapse the geographical
distance that has long separated rural people from
themselves and their urban partners…
…but that such technology must work to bridge human
relationships through events, programs, publications, and
the creation of collaborative communities.

11. What’s Next?
• Further collaboration and
engagement online and on the
ground
• Expand the network across rural
and urban lines
• Launch new site for the project and Art of the Rural in August of 2013
• Develop a toolkit for community engagement
• Partner with state and national entities to enhance rural networks and expand
the potential for storytelling and collaboration
• Continue discussion and inquiry into the evolving nature of the project
• Are we building a narrative atlas? Has this project become The Atlas of Rural
Arts and Culture? Will that idea better serve rural people, rural arts, and rural
policy?

12. Imagine an atlas with a structure ordered to tell a story greater than those told
by each individual map, an atlas with something more clearly on its mind than
keeping the maps off the floor. There are terrific examples of narrative atlases,
self-consciously narrative...This effectively and immediately removes the
maps from the class of reference works and encourages reading the maps as
links in a chain of argument…It soon becomes apparent that the plates build
on each other, that the divisions of the atlas have a rhetorical—not arbitrary–
basis, that the notes are vital to any deep understanding of the maps.
- Denis Wood, Everything Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas

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20. For more information
 The Rural Arts and Culture Map:
http://placestories.com/community/RuralArtsAndCulture
 The Art of the Rural:
http://theruralsite.blogspot.com
 Southwest Rural Policy Network:
http://southwestruralpolicynetwork.org/

21. Digital Advocacy
Webinar Series
A Connected Center:
Bringing Communities Online
Continue the conversation at:
www.ruralxchange.net/digital
Funding from