![]() We work alongside partners from the Deep South to the South Bronx to turn our approach to storytelling into a new method of community-based cultural work, organizing, and wealth creation-what we call Community Cultural and Economic Development (CCED). In sharp contrast to the poverty-based narratives that have long defined Appalachia, Appalshop tells stories of resourceful communities working through hardship to build a “ cooperative commonwealth” where residents work together to fulfill their needs and wants, where everyone’s worth is affirmed, and where-as an inclusive community- we own what we make. This private extraction by national and multinational businesses has been accompanied by a media narrative casting Appalachian residents as ignorant, backward, and hateful, or as helpless recipients of government aid.Īppalshop-the worker-run nonprofit that initiated the Letcher County Culture Hub-produces home-grown films, theater, music, radio, and other art that tells a different story. Letcher County is located in Kentucky’s fifth Congressional district, which has long lingered near the bottom of national rankings for health and wealth resulting from generations of exploitation of the region’s land and laborers. But with an understanding of our local commitment to grassroots-led, culture-driven development work, you can see why it makes sense. In a place widely considered “Trump country,” this might seem surprising. After three years of organizing, the network successfully secured an investment of half a million dollars in four solar-powered community buildings. During my four years working and organizing here, I have heard plenty of skepticism about climate science.īut last year, our county’s grassroots groups (organized into a collective network known as the Letcher County Culture Hub) completed the biggest nonindustrial alternative energy project in the history of the east Kentucky coalfields. In Letcher County, Ky., where coal mines once boomed and talk about the “ war on coal” is commonplace, environmentalism isn’t particularly popular. ![]()
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