Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.
John Davis is giving ‘the arts’ a new name in rural Minnesota. For Davis, art is not about passively gazing at something expensive hanging in a museum. It’s about cultivating spaces where people can come together, learn from each other, and think creatively about how to solve problems in their communities. Davis has worked to build these spaces in small towns across Minnesota for nearly four decades. He’s earned many awards for his work, most recently adding the 2025 Peter Capell Award for entrepreneurial-minded arts leaders to the list.
Davis’s career started in New York Mills, Minnesota, where he founded the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center and launched a community-run philosophy competition called The Great American Think-Off, which gained national attention. He then moved to Lanesboro, Minnesota, where he founded and served as Executive Director at Lanesboro Arts. Now, he lives in Warroad, a town of about 1,900 abutting the Canadian border in northern Minnesota. He serves as Executive & Artistic Director of Warroad RiverPlace, a state-of-the art facility designed with the intention that it could feel like home for every member of the community.
Enjoy our conversation about what Davis has learned in these communities along the way.
Participants compete in the Great American Think-Off in New York Mills, Minnesota. (Photo by New York Mills Regional Cultural Center, contributed by John Davis)
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
DY: What first sparked your interest in art and rural sustainability?
JD: When I was growing up, we didn’t have a TV. When I was in first or second grade, I came home from school one day and saw two TVs stacked on top of each other. The TV on the bottom didn’t have any picture, but it had sound. And the TV on top of it had sound, but no picture. So two broken TVs made one functional TV – you just had to turn them to the same station. That really made an impact on me: combine two broken things, and you can turn it into something that works. Years later, I ended up putting that story in presentations that I do about rural communities, just to show the importance of looking at things differently.
DY: How did you start your career in rural Minnesota?
JD: I found an old abandoned farmhouse with 15 acres outside of New York Mills, Minnesota, moved into it, spent several years fixing it up, and turned it into a residency program for urban artists and rural artists to learn from each other. I got people from the community – farmers, business folks, teachers – to be on the Board of Directors, and started a new nonprofit organization called New York Mills Regional Cultural Center, dedicated to cultivating the arts.
Exterior and interior of New York Mills Regional Cultural Center in New York Mills, Minnesota. (Photos by New York Mills Regional Cultural Center, contributed by John Davis)Exterior and interior of New York Mills Regional Cultural Center in New York Mills, Minnesota. (Photos by New York Mills Regional Cultural Center, contributed by John Davis)
One of my first revelations when I moved to New York Mills was that this [cultural center] isn’t going to work if it’s just for folks who like ‘the arts.’ My big philosophy is the audience is everyone. If your audience is everyone, what does that look like? How do you reach out to farmers? How do you reach out to business folks? How do you reach out for folks that say they’re not interested in the arts? You say, okay, well what are you interested in?
When we would have artists in residence, we would look for proposals that integrated them with the farming community. One artist worked with area farmers to create a sculptural fence for a new gas station that was opening up. For teachers, you engage the school, you do free programs for kids, you invite parents to come in. For the business community, you show how the arts can financially benefit Main Street America. The city council of New York Mills invested $35,000 in the cultural center renovation, and that civic investment literally changed how other small towns in Minnesota looked at the arts. They saw that New York Mills is doing this and they’re becoming successful. The narrative is that “small towns are dying” – one of these false narratives about rural communities. It’s wrong. Because when you start thinking about problems differently, that’s when you can really create momentum and to start shifting those narratives.
Inside the Lanesboro Arts Gallery in Lanesboro, Minnesota. (Photo by Lanesboro Arts, contributed by John Davis)
DY: You continued your work in Lanesboro – tell me a little bit about what you did there.
JD: Yes, after I worked in New York Mills for about 14 years, I took a job at a gallery in Lanesboro. I approached the Board of Directors at the gallery, the theater, and another arts organization in town, and I laid out a vision to turn the whole community into an arts campus. I thought it was a really cool idea – a whole town becoming a canvas for the arts – but everyone I approached thought it was an absolutely terrible idea. I realized I just broke my own rule – I just moved to a community and proposed a whole new idea and had no credibility with the community. Doesn’t matter what you’ve done in the other town – you’ve got to do the hard work of getting to know the community.
So that’s what we did. And it wasn’t until around 2008 when the Great Recession really hit, when a community member said, hey, John, what about that arts campus idea? From there, we got our board behind the concept and did a million dollar capital campaign during a recession. There was a buy-in to the idea at that point – people were invested in it, including the city council. There was a logical progression to downtown development, including historic preservation guidelines and doing the work to allow the city to be eligible for block grants, so it ended up leveraging over two and a half million dollars in downtown renovations. That’s what having a shared vision can do for a community, when people are thinking creatively together about how to move a community in a direction.
Lanesboro also had a historic dam – one of like five of its kind in the country – that was at risk of failing. So we created an art exhibit about water to help raise awareness for it. That was what was exciting about the arts campus initiative – it asked the question, “how can the arts help solve challenges that the community has?”
DY: Now you live in Warroad, Minnesota and serve as the director of Warroad RiverPlace. What is RiverPlace?
Poem by an artist from rural Preston, MN displayed in a “poetry parking lot” in Lanesboro, Minnesota, part of the town’s arts campus initiative. (Photo by Lanesboro Arts, contributed by John Davis)
JD: The idea for RiverPlace came about from a community member who wanted to build and invest in a large arts and cultural center to help bring the community together. When I was recruited to be the first Executive & Artistic Director of Warroad RiverPlace, I was intrigued about the possibility of something new happening in the community, but I was concerned that the community might not be involved. Because if it’s just one person’s idea, then it’s not really going to work. It’s not going to take root. Activating a building can be really hard in a small town, also finding folks to work there could be hard too. And it’s a 20,000 square foot, $20 million facility that has a high-tech theater in it as well. It shouldn’t exist in a town that size.
So it was important that our mission be not just having something that’s for everyone, but activating spaces to make sure that community members feel ownership – to make sure they feel like it’s theirs to have a say in.
DY: How did you build RiverPlace into a space with community ownership?
JD: It started with hard hat tours. The Lions Club wanted a tour, and I was like, of course, that’s how we’re going to do this. We’re going to invite people in so that they can see what it is, what the possibilities are, and I can ask them what they’d like to see. We even had the entire third grade class do hard hat tours – their safety vests down to their feet – and then they would tell their parents that this is what RiverPlace is going to be: it’s going to be for us.
Kid’s class at Warroad RiverPlace. (Photo by Warroad RiverPlace, contributed by John Davis)
When we had our first event, we didn’t call it a grand opening because openings come and go. We called it a grand welcoming, because welcoming is a process – we’re always welcoming folks. We put together a program with Native American dancers, drummers, the local dance company in town, a regional art exhibit of all the local artists. The auditorium holds 320 people and we had over 1,100 people attend that day. Those are big numbers, even for an urban area – so for a town on the Canadian border that has 1,800 folks, it’s extraordinary. Folks just came. And we were up against Potato Days, a potato festival in the neighboring town. We ended up talking with them so that folks from Potato Days could come and vice versa. Small town stuff, right? But that’s what makes things magic, when things can come together.
DY: RiverPlace was purposely designed to be accessible by foot, boat, bike, plane, snowmobile, ice skates, or cross-country skiing. What went into that, and what is the significance of that accessibility?
JD: RiverPlace is along a river, which is also the nation’s longest skate path. The first winter that we were open, we saw little kids skating along the path. So we thought, what a great way to connect folks to the arts. This year, we’re having events that connect to the skate path so that skaters can come and participate. Ski on up, skate on up. Next year, we’re adding docks so that boaters can come up as well. It’s all about breaking down barriers to accessibility, making it as simple as possible for people to engage.
My personal philosophy is making the arts accessible to everyone. So how do you do that? You break down barriers and have conversations to create that engagement, make it as accessible as possible to the community, and make sure the many different cultures within Warroad have access to that creativity.
DY: How does Warroad RiverPlace engage different cultural identities within the town?
JD: There’s a strong Ojibwe and Anishinaabe culture in Warroad – Warroad’s name comes literally from war road, referring to battles between Indigenous tribes. RiverPlace has a really strong connection with the Native American education program at the local school. When we had a grand welcoming, we made sure there were Native drummers. And before we even opened the facility, before a shovel went in the ground, we had a ground blessing ceremony.
Indigenous artist Cindy Godin Hamilton presented “An Indigenous Artist’s Journey Through Leather, Beadwork, & Portraiture” at Warroad RiverPlace. (Photo by Warroad RiverPlace, contributed by John Davis)
Last fall, we did an event called the Festival of Cultures. Before it happened, I was thinking, are people going to show up for this? But before we even opened the doors, we had 50 people lined up in front of the building like it was a rock concert. I’ve never had that happen in a small town. We had over 450 attendees for a three-hour event. Community members from twelve different cultural identities were represented: Laos, Philippines, Cuba, Mexico, Norway, South Africa, Venezuela, Haiti, Canada, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, and Indigenous American tribes. Each had their own booth with ethnic food and storyboards made by the kids. And there were performances as well. Two elders from the community – even though they weren’t planning on performing – did an impromptu performance of music and dance, this beautiful five-minute performance.
Participants pose with storyboards and put on performances at Warroad RiverPlace’s Festival of Cultures. (Photos by Warroad RiverPlace, contributed by John Davis)Participants pose with storyboards and put on performances at Warroad RiverPlace’s Festival of Cultures. (Photos by Warroad RiverPlace, contributed by John Davis)Participants pose with storyboards and put on performances at Warroad RiverPlace’s Festival of Cultures. (Photos by Warroad RiverPlace, contributed by John Davis)
DY: What do you see as the significance of this work, especially in the current political moment?
JD: There are always false narratives that look for ways to divide people, along ethnic lines, along urban-rural lines. Creativity can find ways to bring people together. How do you create impact on people’s lives through creativity and through moments that are connected in time? Just like when I was a little boy, those two TVs stacked together, these things have an impact in your lives. And when you’re seeing things that can help inspire you, that’s just so important in the world right now, finding things that can provide hope and inspiration. I’ve seen it over 35, almost 40 years now of what that can do.
In the time that I’ve done this work, I’ve never once asked anyone their political affiliation. All politics are local. And when you can literally see the impact on kids’ lives, on main street businesses’ lives, they become supportive. Maybe they don’t use the same language, but that’s what really can lead to sparks that can get people thinking differently, long-term, about the success of their communities.
This interview first appeared in Path Finders, a weekly email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each Monday, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Join the mailing list today, to have these illuminating conversations delivered straight to your inbox.
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The post Q&A: To This Rural Arts Leader, the ‘Audience is Everyone’ appeared first on The Daily Yonder.
