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Rooftops of historic buildings in the Village of Starksboro are visible from the Rublee Farm, one of the remaining eight farms that are central to the town’s rural character.

MIDDLEBURY, VT— For millennia, art has uplifted, healed, and provoked.  But can it bring together college students and dairy farmers, conservationists and developers, urban transplants and long-time residents? Can it spur them to think about land use? Can it help a town protect its heart and soul? A team of national nonprofit organizations thinks so. Starksboro, VT, with about 2,000 residents, was recently selected to receive $75,000 in funding and resources as part of an “Art & Soul Civic Engagement” program. The program in Starksboro will serve as a pilot project, which organizers hope to apply to other cities and towns across the country.

“As Starksboro defines its future through revising its Town Plan, the use of storytelling and other artistic media will provide powerful new avenues for active and diverse participation,” said William Roper, the Foundation’s President and CEO. “We believe this innovative process will make community conversations more creative, relevant and enduring.” Beginning this fall, a class of Middlebury College students will leave behind their laptops and lecture halls and venture out onto the back roads of Starksboro. With renowned author and Middlebury College professor John Elder, the students will collect personal stories from Starksboro residents and then share the stories with residents at a town-wide celebration this winter.

A Vermont artist-in-residence (to be selected) will then work with the community to translate the collected stories and the values embedded in them into works of art. The sponsoring organizations hope that the communal process of creating art, as well as the art itself, will spark interest and discussions around what people want for Starksboro’s future. Starksboro will then use the values and the vision that emerge to help shape policies and a new Town Plan.

“This project truly resonates with our Vermont communities,” offered Gil Livingston, President of the Vermont Land Trust (VLT). “The strong response demonstrates that individuals are thinking quite deliberately about their town’s future—about where they wish to grow and what is important to protect. Ten years ago Starksboro worked with VLT to protect the Cota Farm, which resulted in the protection of a farm, a ball field, and 1.5 miles of Lewis Creek. We look forward to learning how engagement through the arts might aid Starksboro citizens in articulating the core values that could help the town navigate the many challenges it faces.” “Cities are beginning to enlist artists to reinvigorate public processes and advance civic goals. Art & Soul is innovative in combining the arts with conservation and land use,” said Animating Democracy co-director Barbara Schaffer Bacon.  “Art can illuminate civic experience and artists can often connect people across real and imagined boundaries.”