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RURAL HERITAGE DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVE
The Arkansas Delta Region has been selected as one of two rural pilot regions to participate in the Rural Heritage Development Initiative (RHDI), a new National Trust for Historic Preservation program that will work to implement preservation-based economic development strategies. The new initiative is funded in significant part through a $745,000 three-year grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The Arkansas Delta was selected from 11 regions across the country that demonstrated the capacity to work collaboratively to develop cultural and heritage assets for economic benefit.
Arkansas’s involvement in the RHDI is an outgrowth of Main Street Arkansas’s Arkansas Delta Initiative for heritage- and preservation-based economic development. Click here to read the assessment report and action blueprint for the Arkansas Delta Initiative.
The Rural Heritage Development Initiative will address the many issues facing rural regions today – from “smart growth” to the loss of their traditional agricultural base – and bring together various multi-disciplinary services of the National Trust for intensive work with partners in the pilot regions over a three-year period.
Through preservation-based strategies including heritage tourism, local entrepreneurial and business development, barn preservation, rural land-use planning, and neighborhood housing revitalization, the program will utilize local assets to achieve economic gains in the pilot regions.
The Arkansas Delta is a 15-county strip along the Mississippi River, characterized by an agriculture heritage in decline, working to transition to new crops; and an indigenous music culture, including blues, gospel, and country. The region has a diversity of historic sites ranging from the Hemingway-Pfeiffer House in the northern part of the region to Lakeport Plantation in the south. There is a Japanese internment camp site near Dumas and a developing Tenant Farmers Union Museum in Tyronza.
The region has five Main Street communities and two federal scenic byways. The ivory-billed woodpecker was recently rediscovered near Brinkley, making the region a prime area for ecotourism. Major partners on the project are Arkansas Main Street, Department of Arkansas Heritage, the Arkansas Delta Byways at Arkansas State University, and the Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas.
Main Street Arkansas provides technical assistance, design services and small business assistance that help create economic development in the state’s downtown areas. The Main Street approach to downtown revitalization focuses on four areas: design, economic restructuring, organization and promotion.
Main Street Arkansas cities are Batesville, Bentonville, Blytheville, Clinton, Dumas, El Dorado, Hardy, Harrison, Helena, North Little Rock, Osceola, Ozark, Paragould, Rogers, Russellville, Searcy, Texarkana and West Memphis.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has a long history of working on rural preservation and revitalization issues through its nationally-recognized National Trust Main Street Center; which originally focused on small towns; its heritage tourism program; the Barn Again! program; and other public policy advocacy.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a private, nonprofit membership organization dedicated to saving historic places and revitalizing America's communities. Staff at the Washington, D.C. headquarters, six regional offices and 26 historic sites work with the Trust’s 270,000 members and thousands of preservation groups in all 50 states. For more information, visit the Trust’s web site at www.nationaltrust.org.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation was established in 1930 “to help people help themselves through the practical application of knowledge and resources to improve their quality of life and that of future generations.” Its programming activities center around the common vision of a world in which each person has a sense of worth; accepts responsibility for self, family, community, and societal well-being; and has the capacity to be productive, and to help create nurturing families, responsive institutions, and healthy communities.
To achieve the greatest impact, the Foundation targets its grants toward specific areas. These include: health; food systems and rural development; youth and education; and philanthropy and volunteerism. Within these areas, attention is given to exploring learning opportunities in leadership; information and communication technology; capitalizing on diversity; and social and economic community development. Grants are concentrated in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the southern African countries of Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe.
The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program is the agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage responsible for the identification, evaluation, registration and preservation of the state’s cultural resources. Other agencies in the department are the Arkansas Arts Council, the Delta Cultural Center in Helena, the Old State House Museum, the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center and the Historic Arkansas Museum.
