“Big Ideas Fest” featured speaker says Youngstown, OH had to look at assets and diversify after steel industry gone, like mining decline in Appalachia. Jay Williams, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Director of the Economic Development Administration, compared similar efforts to rebuild his hometown – Youngstown, OH, where the steel industry cratered in […]
Can artists, dancers, actors, musicians and creative thinkers of all varieties contribute to the economic rebuilding of our Appalachian communities? WMMT’s Kelli Haywood looked for answers to that question as she visited the 15th annual Cowan Creek Mountain Music School at the Cowan Community Center. The Center is one partner in a creative placemaking effort led […]
Celebrating the place where we’re from, and the people who hail from there, is an important step in recognizing and building on the many assets that can be used to revive and strengthen our communities. WMMT’s Benny Becker travelled to Harlan, KY to join the George Ellabration, a community celebration of Kentucky poet laureate and eastern Kentucky […]
The communities of Cleveland, St. Paul and Dungannon, a “string of pearls” along the Clinch River in southwestern Virginia, have a lot to celebrate. A coalition of public and private groups worked over many years to convince Virginia regulators and legislators to designate 130 miles of the Clinch River and a patchwork of land along its […]
