The Activate Rural Learning Lab is a 2-year curated cohort experience for teams of creative entrepreneurs, artists, community activators, elected leaders, and small business owners to cultivate creative third places in rural communities. The Learning Lab provides grant funding and ongoing curated technical assistance through monthly project check-ins, exchange visits, workshops and gatherings, and allocated staff time to support the development of systems for the project’s operations, activations, and stewardship.
DoPT will select 10 building activation projects in rural communities with a population under 20,000 residents in Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and the Native nations that share that geography. Ideal projects will (1) be creative and community-focused, (2) be ready to try something new, and (3) demonstrate the potential to build local capacity for creative approaches to building activation.
