We’ve been out & about all month long connecting with our communities, regions, and the field. This month, we’re excited to share some updates from our programs and travels with you!
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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.
Meet our 2026-2027 Spillway Fellows: Sarah Abdel-Jelil and Cándida González! We are so excited to support their creative practice and welcome them to Winona throughout this two-year fellowship.
Sarah Abdel-Jelil is a Mauritanian-American filmmaker, dancer, musician, and multimedia artist based in Minneapolis. Inspired by her nomadic upbringing in a multicultural, interfaith household across eight different countries, her films explore the relational nature of home, movement, and liminal spaces as well as the tether between human and the more-than-human environment.
Cándida González (they/them) is a queer, trans, mixed Puerto Rican multimedia artist from Minneapolis. They most often work in temporary altar installations using found objects, words, digital collage, photography and elements of the natural world. Their projects explore how the manipulation of basic elements into different configurations produce distinct energies/spells. They approach their work by centering at the intersection of art, activism, healing and diasporican empowerment. They are deeply invested in the concept of using art and community design as tools to wage love and healing and prioritize participatory installations.
We are deeply grateful to the Jerome Foundation for making this opportunity possible, and to our community partners for their collaboration: the Honoring Dakota Project, Engage Winona, Winona County Historical Society, and The Cedar Tree Project.
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.
The KY Rural-Urban Exchange (RUX) was excited to be part of Appalshop’s 40th Seedtime on the Cumberland earlier this month. The weekend-long festival, hosted in Whitesburg, KY, features art, music, dancing, food, and craft from throughout the region.
On Friday of the festival, RUXers convened in time to enjoy the annual Seedtime Punk Show, which featured Juanita, RUX’s former band-in-residence. On Saturday, RUX then took to the stage to host a conversation with Bonnie Prince Billy and The Local Honeys!
RUXers also got to enjoy two hikes throughout the weekend, including a tanglewood ecology excursion with Cowan Community Action Group’s James Stapleton and RUX cohort member & Kentucky Natural Land Trust’s Megan Falce.
We are deeply grateful to our longtime partners at Appalshop for hosting us! It was amazing to go back to the place where RUX started in 2014.
Holly Doll, Lakota Artist & Arts Midwest Program Manager
Kelly Yarbough & Derek Hamm, Tallgrass Prairie Residency
Michele Anderson, Rural Director at Springboard for the Arts
Our Exchange Director & RUX Co-Founder Savannah Barrett is featured on the 100 Rural Women Podcast! Tune in now to hear Savannah share her journey as a rural Kentuckian, community organizer, and national advocate for rural communities.
Earlier this month, our Communications Manager Hannah Almon Matangos spent a week exploring Albuquerque and connecting with the field during AFTACON 2026. For the past 6 months, she has been part of the Empowering Rural Arts & Culture Pathway Committee with Krysta Aina (Arts Council for Wyoming County), Joseph Allen (Manoomin Arts Initiative), and Dr. Astrid Kaemmerling (Educational Foundation of America). With the help of AFTA staff, the committee planned and co-facilitated breakout sessions and a full-day Incubator to bring artists & organizations from across geographies together for resource sharing and field-wide visioning.
Various Dates & Locations
Check out the full schedule for events to gather with the KY Rural-Urban Exchange network in your region — and pitch your own — at kyrux.org/rhizomes.
Friday, July 17, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. Eastern
Rowan County Arts Center, Morehead, KY
As part of our 2026 cohort’s Morehead Community Intensive weekend, join us for a public Community Conversation and square dance! With local community members and creative leaders, we’ll discuss the arts in Rowan County, followed by a classic RUX square dance at Sawstone Brewing next door.
Thursday, July 23, 12:00 p.m. Central
Join us with our friends at Engage Winona to watch this annual broadcast from Rural Assembly in community. You can also watch online, wherever you are! Learn more at ruralassembly.org/everywhere
Inspired and informed by the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange, PA Humanities’ PA Cultural Exchange (PaX) Fellowship will bring together practioners across Pennsylvania for immersive learning exchanges, leadership development, and community-based project support. Fellows receive a $10,000 fellowship award and participate in supported cultural exchange weekends. Apply by July 8
First Peoples Fund’s Native Performing Arts Fellowship supports emerging and established Native performing artists to develop and enhance their skills and knowledge of their craft. This fellowship provides grants of up to $10,000 for Native individuals who practice or work within the performing arts landscape (theater, dance, music, etc.). Apply by July 15
Waymakers Collective’s Appalachian Visionary Artist Fund supports visual artists and collectives across Central Appalachia creating bold, public-facing, and experimental work that expands the conversation around contemporary art in our region. A regional re-granting program of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, twelve grants will provide $5,000, with recipients selected by a panel of nationally and internationally recognized arts leaders. Apply by August 2
The National Association of Black Storytellers’ Black Appalachian Storytellers Fellowships honor, celebrate, and support storytellers representing Appalachian counties of KY, NC, OH, TN, VA, and WV. Fellows will show a commitment and proven ability to sustain the traditions of Black storytelling that embody the history, heritage, and culture of African Americans in Appalachia. Six fellowships will provide a $5,000 award. Apply by August 3
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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