Uintah Basin Speakers series tells untold stories of rural renewal

Utah State University Uintah Basin uncovered the story of a small rural community within the throes of an unorthodox rural rehabilitation through their Speaker Series program. The program invites experts and trailblazers within their fields to present and speak on their work, bringing insightful and relevant topics into the larger community conversation. 

Jim LaMuth, director of programs at USU Uintah, helps coordinate campus events such as the Speaker Series. 

“We started our Speaker Series as a further step to engage our local community,” LaMuth said.  

As a land-grant university, USU Uintah wanted to focus on their mission of community contribution and involvement. 

“We wanted to look deeper into the purpose of a land-grant university and how it can serve our community,” LaMuth said.  

The Speaker Series was created in the fall of 2020, and USU Uintah invites six speakers to present each year. 

“We try to find a variety of speakers on subject matters that are related to life in the Uintah Basin or challenges and concerns in the Uintah Basin,” LaMuth said. “Whether they’re directly speakers from our area or their work involves similar themes that you’re seeing in our community.” 

Past speakers have covered a wide range of topics relevant to the Uintah Basin, including indigenous culture, mental health, female leadership and development and environment-based challenges.  

On Nov. 12, Maria Sykes, executive director of the rural renewal non-profit Epicenter, was invited to present on how her unique rural project has helped spark community involvement, leadership and creativity within the small town of Green River, Utah. 

Green River lies in the high north-eastern corner of Utah and is a small rural community of roughly 900 inhabitants. Due to the loss of popular industries within the town, such as uranium mining, the town’s dwindling population has most often relied on tourism and agriculture. 

“The population has pretty much been declining since the ’70s,” Sykes said. “But the entire narrative isn’t just the challenges the community faces because I like to think of them as opportunities.” 

The Epicenter program was established in Green River in 2009. The program takes an untraditional approach when it comes to rural development, focusing on art, architecture and community building as a way to invest in their rural community. 

According to the Epicenter website, their mission centers around involving local community members in town leadership and development projects. 

“One of our goals is developing affordable housing,” Sykes said. “Our main project right now is called Canal Commons.” 

The Canal Commons project will be opening up a new neighborhood along the Green River to provide more affordable and accessible housing to the community. 

“Where Canal Commons is situated were once just vacant lots, just kind of sitting there,” Sykes said. “We were able to bring new life to some of those sites in downtown Green River.” 

Though small in number, the Green River community is tight-knit and focused on its celebration of people and town pride. Epicenter residents express themselves through creative architecture and artistic city planning as a way of getting involved with their local community. 

“Art and culture is very much at the heart of what we do,” Sykes said. “Even when we’re designing a house or doing development, we are always trying to come at it from a design or arts perspective.”  

The value of art and culture within the community is apparent in the statues, signs and murals that color the town streets.  

“There has been a great impact on the community, whether it’s helping people establish a business or supporting their small business or working with youth in the schools,” Sykes said. “We’re honored to be able to help move some of those local ideas and dreams forward.” 

During her Speaker Series presentation titled “The Art of Rural Renewal,” Sykes said she spoke on the lessons that she has learned from Epicenter during the last 15 years. 

“One of the big lessons we always talk about is having patience,” Sykes said. “Making sure to celebrate those little wins, otherwise the work can feel so daunting, especially after 15 years.”  

According to Sykes, Epicenter hopes to serve as a model for other rural communities with its focus on community involvement and engagement. 

“The art of rural renewal is like many types of art because you can do it in a lot of different ways,” Sykes said. “I think we’ve mastered the art of rural renewal in our community in terms of how we are responding to our community, and doing that in a creative way.”