Monthly Digest (February 2026)
Check out updates from Art of the Rural and upcoming opportunities from the field.
Hello from Art of the Rural! 🌾
We haven’t been in your inbox lately — but we have been out & about caring for our communities, and at our desks planning for a bountiful year ahead. Below, find some updates from our work and upcoming opportunities from the field. We can’t wait to gather with you this year!
Call for artists!
Sioux City Art Center 2026 Biennial: Interstates
The 2026 Sioux City Art Center Biennial invites artists to create new work that reflects on movement, connection, and distance as they shape life in Iowa and the Siouxland region. Interstates control how we move through and understand the region. Interstate 29 follows a section of the Missouri River, carrying people and goods through Sioux City. I-80 runs east and west, connecting the Great Plains to the rest of the country. I-35 cuts through the middle of the state, an artery that includes Des Moines, the Twin Cities, and Kansas City. Together, these highways link local life to a much larger network, placing Iowa at a crossroads of movement and exchange.
Artists are encouraged to consider how these networks of travel, exchange, and crossing can be understood in visual, material, or conceptual ways. Work might respond to the history of rivers and roads, the everyday experience of traffic and bridges, or the ways art and culture travel across borders. Proposals can be rooted in personal perspective or public life.
The exhibition is guest-curated by Art of the Rural Executive Director Matthew Fluharty. Learn more and apply by February 27!
Cross-country organizations work toward a new civic future
Last week, we were among a small group of democracy and civic life practitioners who published an open letter to imagine what a supported, creative, place-based civic future could look like if we all worked to make civic life more participatory, alive, proximate, relational, and generational.
If these values resonate with you, we invite you to read the letter, sign on, and join us for upcoming gatherings at newcivicfuture.org
Read the letter:
Spillway
Through support for artists, culture bearers, artisans, and storytellers – alongside the local organizations that support them – Spillway works to create the conditions for engaged projects that honor diverse lived experience, deepen regional relationships, and build rural-urban networks of knowledge-sharing and exchange that will create opportunities for artists, culture bearers, and artisans to thrive, connect with new colleagues and audiences.
2026-27 Spillway Fellowship applications open March 2-31
The Spillway Fellowship Program seeks applicants cultivating a range of work across visual art disciplines and socially-engaged practice. Through support for early career artists and culture bearers from Minnesota and the Native Nations in this geography, fellowships will be offered to artists and culture bearers whose practice is committed to considering the multilayered intersections of culture, land, and history. To advance this work and deepen these connections, fellows will build relationships with individuals and organizations across multiple local visits that culminate — through time and trust — in a public presentation, event, or exhibition in Winona, Minnesota, a town located along the Mississippi River in Dakota homelands.
Get inspired by our current & previous fellows!
Merging the Sister Sands of Time in Red Wing
Last Monday, the Winona community (including our friends at Winona County Historical Society, WGSS at Winona State University, Turtle Island Student Organization - TISO, and Front Porch Management) loved gathering with the Honoring Dakota Project, Red Wing Arts, and members of Prairie Island Indian Community for Sister Sands of Time in Red Wing.
Together, we merged the sands of He Mni Can and her twin sister, Heyaka Cokeya Owanka (Sugar Loaf), in the ongoing commitment between our communities & the land we live within, and a continuation of the Community Crafting Circle held in Winona last fall.
Stay tuned for upcoming ways to get involved and support this intercultural work.
Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange
A nationally-celebrated leadership network using place-based cultural exchange programming to develop the skills, networks, and capacity of rural and urban leaders to bridge divides and make change.
Big news for RUX!
The Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange (RUX) is doubling down on its investment in our statewide network of Kentuckians. This means more support for this mighty network to host RUX experiences in their own towns and regions, and more RUX experiences at Kentucky festivals & conferences.
This year, RUX will support regional exchange, double our microgrants, and grow RUX’s membership. We’re excited about the year ahead, and these priorities do require us to try new things. We will not be accepting a new class of RUX fellows in the creative leadership program in 2026. Instead, we will invest those resources to bring the RUX curriculum, experience, and resources to more communities across the state simultaneously.
Learn more about what’s on in 2026 and get involved!
RUX micrograntees pilot cross-sector projects across KY
Since 2023, the KY RUX Intercultural Microgrant program has invested over $88,000 in 53 cross-sector projects in every KY region. We’re excited to share stories and media projects from our 2025 micrograntees. Together, they show the depth and breadth of Kentuckians’ commitment to their communities and creativity in representing & nourishing complex Kentucky stories, including youth-led environmental & educational advocacy, Affrilachian quilting traditions, intercultural music projects, and more!
Season 2 is now loading…
Next week, the Art of the Rural podcast returns with Shanai Matteson & Annie Humphrey from Fire in the Village!
Did you miss any of last season’s episodes? Tune in now and find resources on the AOTR website.
Opportunities from the Field
Rural Assembly is looking for 2026 Everywhere Site Partners! You’ll host a community gathering during the week of July 23-30, held in conjunction with RA’s annual virtual broadcast connecting rural communities across the country.
Department of Public Transformation’s Engage Rural 101 webinar series provides resources, guidance, and connection for rural community leaders as they develop creative strategies for civic engagement. The next webinar is on February 25, 2:00-2:45 p.m. CT.
Blue Sky Center’s 2026 Resilient Cuyama Action Fellowships seek artists or artist teams of any discipline (Visual Art, Film, Music, Writing, Theater, Dance, Design, etc.) who focus on social practice, community engagement, and relational aesthetics to support creative community development in the Cuyama Valley. Apply by February 28
The Northern Plains Indigenous Film Festival is now welcoming submissions for its inaugural celebration of Native and Indigenous cinema, happening April 17–18, 2026, in Fargo, North Dakota. Submit by March 1
Building Common Ground: Fieldwork is a new program offering free design and planning support, alongside small project grants, for community-centered projects that amplify local history, culture, and identity. Apply by March 27
Springboard for the Arts’ Falls Community Arts Exchange seeks artists to collaborate on community projects rooted in creativity, connection, and possibility with Fergus Falls, MN. Apply by March 30
Do you have opportunities you’d like to share? Send them to us at info@artoftherural.org, comment, or hop into the Substack Subscriber Chat below!
About Art of the Rural
Art of the Rural is a collaborative nonprofit organization that resources artists and culture bearers to build the field, change narratives, and bridge divides. Our initiatives are long-term, trust-based efforts that co-create spaces for exchange and impact across the traditional dividing lines of place, practice, and lived experience.
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