SMALL TOWNS
ARE FOR BIG IDEAS
OPEN SPACES
NEVER CLOSE
The role of the cultural worker is to discern, nurture, cultivate, and encourage the existing culture of a place.
Mary Welcome (Palouse, Washington/Idaho) is a multidisciplinary cultural worker. As an artist-organizer, her projects are rooted in community engagement and the development of intersectional programming to address equity, cultural advocacy, inclusivity, visibility, and imagination. She brings a nuanced perspective to the contemporary field, as an organizer working in service to small towns, as a cultural producer across American geographies, and as a facilitator of place-based arts programming.
She believes in small towns, long winters, optimists, parades, and talking about feelings.
She serves as the first ever as the artist-in-residence at a statewide government agency with the Washington State Department of Transportation and a civic designer for the City of Palouse.
Her collective and collaborative partners include Hi-Vis Agency, Cabin-Time, Homeboat, M12 Studio, Brokeback Palouse, the Department of Public Transformation, Camp Little Hope, Art of the Rural, Common Field, Springboard for the Arts, and the United States Postal Service.
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She believes in small towns, long winters, optimists, parades, and talking about feelings.
She serves as the first ever as the artist-in-residence at a statewide government agency with the Washington State Department of Transportation and a civic designer for the City of Palouse.
Her collective and collaborative partners include Hi-Vis Agency, Cabin-Time, Homeboat, M12 Studio, Brokeback Palouse, the Department of Public Transformation, Camp Little Hope, Art of the Rural, Common Field, Springboard for the Arts, and the United States Postal Service.
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Featured Work
The Rural Futures Deck is a reflection of our shared context—a collection of places, people, questions, and visions. Out in the hinterlands and in the heart of our homes, we are building a shared future that is vast, mycelial, and entwined.
Use these cards as a tool in your community to collectively dream, to combat complacency, build equitable systems, and deepen understanding across generations and geographies. Explore shared identity, stewardship and sovereignty, cultural reclamation, and community healing.
Rural Futures
The Rural Futures Deck is a reflection of our shared context—a collection of places, people, questions, and visions. Out in the hinterlands and in the heart of our homes, we are building a shared future that is vast, mycelial, and entwined.
Use these cards as a tool in your community to collectively dream, to combat complacency, build equitable systems, and deepen understanding across generations and geographies. Explore shared identity, stewardship and sovereignty, cultural reclamation, and community healing.
Featured Work
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Developed in partnership with the Blandin Foundation and Springboard for the Arts, this comprehensive field guide is designed to empower rural leaders in planning and executing effective place-based projects centered in arts, culture and creativity.
Heartland, Heartwork: A Field Guide to Place & Possibility for Rural Leaders
Developed in partnership with the Blandin Foundation and Springboard for the Arts, this comprehensive field guide is designed to empower rural leaders in planning and executing effective place-based projects centered in arts, culture and creativity.
Featured Work
A hyperlocal newsprint publication connecting the public to the often invisible labor of maintenance work in the Washington State Department of Transportation. Each issue of the publication explores regional area’s maintenance staff through intentionally meta research, stories, observations, maps, legislation, and statistics.
An issue of The Maintenance Post bridges the relationship between maintenance work and localized communities, is shared across state lines to other transportation departments, and serves as a critical personal link to the traveling public.
The Maintenance Post
A hyperlocal newsprint publication connecting the public to the often invisible labor of maintenance work in the Washington State Department of Transportation. Each issue of the publication explores regional area’s maintenance staff through intentionally meta research, stories, observations, maps, legislation, and statistics.
An issue of The Maintenance Post bridges the relationship between maintenance work and localized communities, is shared across state lines to other transportation departments, and serves as a critical personal link to the traveling public.
MARY WELCOME WELCOMES YOU
PO BOX 364 PALOUSE, WASH
Neighbor first, all else follows
PO BOX 364 PALOUSE, WASH
Neighbor first, all else follows