Interview with Savannah Barrett: Exchange Director for Art of the Rural and co-founder of the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange
The heart of Grayson Springs, where Savannah Barrett learned the value of home. Illustration by Beyond the Clock Storyteller + Illustrator-in-Residence, Nhatt Nichols.
Savannah Barrett was a featured Rural Rockstar guest for the February 2024 Beyond the Clock.
Savannah shared her insights, stories, and experiences as a rural visionary, and as the Exchange Director for Art of the Rural and co-founder of the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange. Her words resonated deeply with us and left a lasting impression, reminding us of the power of rural communities, encapsulated by Savannah's quote: "When we seek common ground, we find it." See interview between Savannah and nhatt nichols (btc illustrator + storyteller-in-residence) below for a deeper dive into her work.
Illustration by Beyond the Clock Storyteller + Illustrator-in-Residence, Nhatt Nichols
About Savannah:
Savannah works as the Exchange Director for Art of the Rural and co-founder of the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange. She has two decades of experience in cultural organizing and arts administration, beginning with a local arts agency she helped to found in high school, and, more recently, as National Programs Director at the Rural Policy Research Institute.
She was raised in Grayson County, Kentucky, where her family has lived for twelve generations, and now lives in South Louisville, in one of Kentucky’s most diverse neighborhoods. Alongside her other work, she leads an effort in her hometown to reimagine Grayson Springs Inn as a rural social enterprise with ten of her closest collaborators. Learn more about Grayson Springs Inn by clicking here.
A CONVERSATION BETWEEN Savannah Barrett AND NHATT NICHOLS
Nhatt:
Listening to you during Beyond the Clock resonated with thoughts I’m having around community and an internal yearning for collectivism.
Savannah:
Absolutely, I think people are really longing for one another. There's a gospel song that I grew up with that begins with , “I'm homesick for a country where I've never been before.” I think that it's a similar longing. I'm a spiritual person, I think that longing for community, or belonging, is like longing for the presence of God.
I also think that when people experience shame, sadness, and pain, that it is related to feeling separated from community, or like they don’t belong, and the reaction is often to try and make others feel that way, too. So often, a person feels hatred for someone else because they see them as oppositional to their ability to be proud of who they are or to continue their way of life. I see this with many of the deeply divisive issues facing us today– the rural-urban divide, partisan politics, immigration rights, DEI education. A lot of people feel like they are being ignored and disrespected, and in their efforts to reject that feeling, they end up disrespecting others. There are too many channels to dish out that disrespect without consequence, and too few to connect with people who you imagine to be in opposition. When that connection does happen, I have found time and time again that when folks who would say that they have a strong distaste for someone else because of their differences actually encounter those folks, they find that they don't feel that way after all.
The problem is that when this does occur, we tend to see that as the exception, not the rule “I don't believe in gay marriage, but my niece is Queer, and I love her,” As a society, we can see a person as an exception to a supremacist idea because they're familiar to us in other ways. “They're part of this community, and they're not like that.” But we stop short of seeing that everyone is an exception, because the rule is inherently flawed.
I think there's something to that idea of homesickness for a country you've never been to before. A longing for wholeness, even if you can't name it. The further we get away from one another, the more empty we feel because we are meant to be together, especially in rural communities. There's this very recent history of places being deeply connected and operating on the economy of neighborliness. It's in all of our memories. It's also suddenly out of reach for millions of people.
I think about our elders who grew up in thriving communities and feel so disconnected from the community now, even though they're surrounded by people who love them, they aren’t a meaningful part of the daily life of those people or their community. It can be similar for new parents, who feel isolated from friends and family as they raise their young children. This feels like a recent problem, and makes me reconsider what social infrastructure means today and how we can rebuild ways of being that make people feel purposeful and supported.
So, those Our communities are more diverse than ever, and so our traditional institutions aren’t don't working for everyone in the ways that they did when we were a more homogenous society. Churches have historically served as this kind of social epicenter, but religious institutions have lost footing because people don’t as readily trust that they are going to be respected and loved in those environments. It makes me deeply sad to say that, but I know I have felt that way at my home church, and I think it’s not an uncommon experience for folks who don’t fit the mold.
I think we are being called to bring people together in a way that celebrates our differences and makes us feel like we are a valuable part of the whole. We need institutions that are truly pluralistic, and understand that diverse people from different backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas make something stronger and more beautiful. How can we build institutions that reflect that belief in word and action, and make them commonplace?
In my work, I'm interested in building meaningful moments of relational impact– moments where people get to feel seen, valued, respected, and heard, and they feel a deep inclination to offer that in return.
I hope that I can do it at the local level in the place that I care most about.
Nhatt:
You're self-selecting on a national scale, but rurally you’re working with people who are geographically contained but not always very similar.
Savannah:
I think there are fewer of these relational spacesat the local level because they're so hard to build and maintain. You have to hold space for so many different kinds of people and different kinds of issues. It takes a lot of experience and buy-in to do that in a way that is collective, but that’s what is called for, and that’s what we hope to contribute to.
Follow Savannah on Instagram @ruxkentucky
Many thanks to both Savannah and Nhatt Nichols. Beyond the Clock is made possible with support from the Rural Assembly, in partnership with Voices for Rural Resilience.