Rutland art garners recognition

July 23rd, 2021 | Story by Gordon Dritschilo | Originally Posted in the Rutland Herald

The story of Rutland’s unique downtown WalMart has been told and retold for years in “placemaking” circles, according the executive director of PlacemakingX.

Ethan Kent said he learned Friday that it was only one chapter in a bigger narrative.

“I had no idea this was going on here,” Kent said at the end of a tour of downtown Rutland. “There’s so many stories of placemaking here.”

Kent along with a few other members of his organization visited downtown as part of a national tour. Local officials showed them downtown murals, the sculpture trail, the Paramount Theatre, and 77 Arts.

“Placemaking is the process through which communities shape their shared public spaces,” he said. “We help highlight, connect and support placemaking leaders all over the world.”

Kent said what he was finding in downtown Rutland merited being publicized.

“This is a very welcoming, diverse, urban space in the center of a rural state,” he said. “People don’t know about this. They don’t know about the history and the connectivity that’s here.”

Richard Amore, planning and outreach manager for the community planning and revitalization program at the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development, said the visit was an affirmation — particularly in seeing how a state grant had facilitated parklets on Center Street. Amore said the Better Places grant the city received had been part of a pilot program that supplied proof of concept for the legislature, which is ready to put $1.5 million behind similar efforts over the next three years.

“Today just reinforces that what we’re doing is a different thinking of economic development,” he said. “It’s not chasing big game. ... It’s economic development.”

As if to drive home the point about downtown art, at least two other groups were independently circulating among the sculptures and murals at the same time as the tour Friday afternoon.

“I think we’re just really hoping to show people both at a state level and across the country that Rutland is a force to be reckoned with for the art we have here,” said Downtown Rutland Partnership Executive Director Nikki Hindman, who was leading the tour. “It’s a huge economic driver. It’s a huge tourism driver.”