Prestonburg-based singer-songwriter Nicholas Jamerson and Aaron Smith perform original music. Photo by Hannah Almon Matangos.
On November 2, 2025, our initiative, the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange (RUX), in partnership with Kentucky Performing Arts, hosted The Golden Thread: Weaving a Culture of Connection. This annual forum brought together visionary leaders & performers from across KY and the RUX alumni & partner network.
Below, find remarks delivered at the event by Art of the Rural Exchange Director & KY RUX Co-Founder, Savannah Barrett. Savannah reflects on the past 11 years of RUX’s impact and the importance of understanding our communities as interdependent during this cultural moment.
Her remarks are interspersed with photos from the event by RUX Steering Committee member M. Tyler McDaniel and AOTR Programs Associate Hannah Almon Matangos.
It’s such a joy to be with you! If you’re new to RUX, you should know that this room is full of Kentuckians who’ve traveled from across the state — from Prestonsburg to Paducah — to join us tonight.
It is so special to come together at our beautiful state performing arts center to recognize the arts, culture, and ideas that weave us together.
Before we get started, I want to take just a moment to recognize the Kentuckians who volunteer to lead RUX every day. If you are a current or former SC or staff member, please stand. Every day, these Kentuckians and other members and partners from all over the state are giving their time and talent to bring us together. Thank you for your service.
I also want to thank our amazing partners at Kentucky Performing Arts, and all of tonight’s performers, speakers, and sponsors. Individually, these Kentuckians each inspire their communities towards action. Together, they represent the strength of our connection.
That’s the spirit of the work we do at KY RUX — a statewide network that brings everyday Kentuckians together to build relationships and find common purpose.
These 400 civic leaders are teachers, farmers, electeds, students, nurses, factory workers, caretakers, and more who travel across Kentucky at their own expense because they know there’s power in meeting people where they’re from.
Across 80 counties, Kentuckians and community partners support, guide, and facilitate this network as volunteers — because they know there’s power in solidarity.
We’ve built this mighty network at the speed of trust, which is slow at first but becomes exponential.
In 2014, a handful of regular Kentuckians started RUX with a mission to build a more connected and collaborative Kentucky. RUX began as a partnership with Appalshop for an exchange between the city of Louisville and the coalfields of Appalachia. It has grown into an alumni-led network that resources changemakers to work across racial, economic, and geographic divides.
Today, we’ve hosted 10 RUX cohorts at 29 conferences in 18 host communities. In each of them, we’ve asked our hosts to show, not tell, because we know that rich, active experiences of local culture, foodways, and environments create neuroplasticity — or the right conditions in the brain for mindset shifts.
So, we create unforgettable local experiences that you just can’t access from the highway. From square dances, farm dinners, and swimming holes to story circles in museums and narrative stages in church basements, RUX has taught us that to build relationships that transcend time, distance, and divide, we have to share the richness of our full selves and the complexity of our places.
You see, relationships are both the solution and the strategy. We’ve learned that true leadership is about deepening connection to people and places, and that vulnerability is the currency of connection.
Now people often think of vulnerability as sharing, but in RUX, we practice vulnerability through listening, recognizing that:
Listening has shown us that when we look for common ground, we find it.
We’ve hosted 100+ community forums that bring the Kentuckians most affected by an issue together with those most positioned to address it to respectfully hear from one another.
RUX has shown us that the shortest distance between two people is a story, and through stories, we can gain trust and relationships to build community.
As we’ve listened, we’ve realized that too often, solutions are built for one problem, in one place at a time, while the problems our communities face are connected.
In partnership with more than 200 Kentucky organizations and businesses, we’ve:
One core belief has emerged across this work: A community flourishes when people see themselves as integral to their place’s future, but society flourishes when those leaders recognize that their future is linked to those up and downstream.
As the network of partners and alumni has grown, so has the impact of this network. Today, a RUX member from anywhere in KY can access the power and resources of local leaders across the state.
This kind of social capital is rare and hard to reach everywhere, but that is less and less true in Kentucky because of all of you.
In a world that profits from our division, I challenge you to be indivisible.
Tomorrow, we’ll continue the work of building a statewide commitment to civic health, and a brand for a Kentucky where innovation thrives in diverse contexts.
But tonight, we’re having a civic revival.
I hope you’re ready to be inspired. Tonight’s speakers and performers are leading work that is innovative, powerful, and singular.
When you leave this room tonight, we hope you’re a little more proud to be an American, and grateful to be a Kentuckian.
Thanks for being with us.
The Golden Thread 2025 was presented by the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange and Kentucky Performing Arts. We are grateful to our Contributing Sponsor Louisville Public Media for getting the word out about the event, and to our Supporting Sponsors Appalachian Impact Fund & the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute at the University of Louisville, and to our Promoting Sponsors Owensboro Health and Partners for Rural Impact.
We are also grateful for the support from many other organizations & individuals over the past 11 years. Thank you for the time and resources you provide KY RUX!
Stay in touch with Art of the Rural updates in your inbox.
Copyright © 2025 Art of the Rural
