Building Common Ground Through Distributed Leadership
Meet our RUX 2023 Steering Committee
RUX is a values-based organization that uses a distributed leadership approach to movement building.
This work would not be possible without the incredible Kentuckians who share their time and talents as RUX steering committee members. As part of RUX leadership, the steering committee engages in year-round planning to steward our program which strengthens professional and intercultural competencies while building connections across racial, economic and geographic divides— towards our shared future. In our distributed leadership model partners, staff, steering committee members, host committees, alumni, and cohorts each have meaningful opportunities to contribute through program design, facilitation, committees, and evaluation. Centering our core values of connection, diversity, openness, and inclusion, the RUX steering committee is committed to building a more collaborative and connected Commonwealth.
Lauren Calhoun (she/her, Daviess County) is a life-long resident of Owensboro, Kentucky. Lauren's love of experiencing diverse cultures and her desire to help foster understanding and connection led her to pursue a Bachelor's degree in French from Murray State University. She minored in vocal music, and paid for her textbooks by playing in a bar band called Bad Kitty on the weekends. After graduation she married her favorite drummer; they have three children together - also percussionists. For the last seven years, Lauren has worked as the Hospital Billing Supervisor at Owensboro Health Regional Hospital. She is proud to serve as a member of the Owensboro Health Arts in Healing Committee and the Community Benefit Grant Review team.
Joel Chapman (he/him, Warren County) is the Program Associate for Folk and Traditional Arts at Mid Atlantic Arts. From 2019 - 2023 he served as the Folklife Specialist for the Kentucky Folklife Program at Western Kentucky University where he worked with music-centered communities in Southcentral Kentucky to produce an online exhibit that both contextualizes and demonstrates the importance of music on a hyper-local level. He also produced Kentucky Folklife, an online magazine dedicated to publishing the work of Kentucky documentarians. He holds an M.A. in Folk Studies with a concentration in Public Folklore from WKU and a B.A. in Folklore & Ethnomusicology and Telecommunications from Indiana University. His folkloric research interests include belief, material culture, folklore as resistance, and occupational lore. In his free time, he is usually day-dreaming about custom bicycle builds, baking bread, gardening, or petting his beloved animals.
Annie Jane Cotten (she/they, Letcher/Knott/Floyd County) serves as the Co-Director of Appalshop’s Community Development Program, the Regional and Local Initiatives Community Development Program Director, and the Letcher County Culture Hub lead organizer. Annie Jane is also a certified holistic community herbalist, and is passionate about organizing efforts that utilize arts and culture to foster vibrant, sustainable community-led and community-owned economies; she enjoys taking mountain walks with her dog Kitty.
Michael George (he/him, Jefferson County) is a passionate person, an aspiring chef, an empath and a psychic who strives to leave the world better than he found it. Michael works for Jefferson County Public Schools, is an avid learner mentor and Shaman, and he runs a community garden called 5th Element farms based on the 5th element of hip hop culture “Knowledge and understanding”.
Taylor Killough Williams (she/her, Jefferson County) is a reporter, writer, and producer based in Louisville who holds degrees in journalism and anthropology; originally from Illinois, she is proud to call Kentucky her chosen home. In her spare time, she loves to travel, tend her garden, and dote on her two rescue pups; her favorite thing about RUX is seeing new places and deepening her understanding of Kentucky’s past to better shape its future.
Tyler McDaniel (he/him, Fayette County) Both professionally, at the Kentucky Historical Society, and personally, Tyler McDaniel uses his tools as a filmmaker, artist, and public historian to amplify already present voices and stories while highlighting how the past is constantly influencing the present. His passions extend to the built environment through not only the structures themselves, but the stories embedded within, alongside the ways that cultural and community identity are formed through place. Holding a BA in Media Production from Morehead State University and a Masters in Heritage Studies and Public History from the University of Minnesota, he has explored cultural oddities and socio-political systems through both rural and urban lenses. This multi-disciplinary approach has translated across multiple projects and organizations including the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange, Squallis Puppeteers, A Public History of 35W research project and museum exhibit, the Minnesota Main Street Program, and Saint Paul’s African American Historic and Cultural Context Study – among others.
Nikita Perumal (she/her, Fayette County) lives in Lexington and grew up in Louisville. Nikita was first introduced to community organizing through student climate justice movements. She now works to support partner organizations at the Kentucky Civic Engagement Table, which advances long term organizing and coordinated civic engagement in the Kentucky progressive ecosystem. In the past, Nikita worked at Kentuckians For The Commonwealth and pursued a Fulbright research project on climate adaptation projects in the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu. In her spare time, Nikita enjoys writing, making Indian food, and taking pictures of her cat.
Olivia Spradlin (she/her, Fayette County) is an avid gardener, canner, knitter, and dog mom. She is a medical anthropologist working at the Kentucky Coalition Against Domestic Violence to build safe and affirming systems of care for all survivors of violence.
Jessica Stevens (she/her, Estill County) is the founder and Boss Lady of Alight Marketing Agency and the Operations Assistant of the Estill Development Alliance, where she works to support business owners and community members in a variety of ways. Jess loves connecting with people from all over the state, uplifting her fellow queer Appalachians, and amplifying the voices of historically excluded folks both through RUX and her personal work.
Azucena Trejo Williams (she/her/ella, Taylor County) is an interdisciplinary artist working in installation, photography, video and sound; her work continues to be exhibited nationally in both solo and group exhibitions. Trejo Williams graduated from the University of North Texas with a B.A. in Photojournalism, received her M.F.A. in Studio Art at Maryland Institute College of Art, and is an Associate Professor of Art & Design at Campbellsville University in Campbellsville, KY.
Meet our 2022 RUX Staff
Co-Facilitator
Ivy Brashear (she/her, Fayette County) is a PhD candidate in Communication at the University of Kentucky, studying the relationship between Appalachia and the Media. Before pursing her PhD, she was the Appalachian Transition Director at the Mountain Association in Berea, Kentucky, where her work included storytelling, policy education and media relations and was focused on shifting the narrative of Appalachia as a critical aspect of just economic transition in Eastern Kentucky. She is a writer whose work has appeared in the Huffington Post, Next City, Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, Yes! Magazine, Scalawag and The Bitter Southerner. She is from the Left Fork of Maces Creek in Viper, Kentucky, where her family has lived for five generations.
Program Manager
Amelia Martens (she/her, McCracken County) is writer, a mom, a twin, and a future keeper of bees. She makes her home in Paducah and is the author of The Spoons in the Grass are There To Dig a Moat (Sarabande Books, 2016), and four poetry chapbooks. In 2019, she received an Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council; lately she’s been writing tiny essays and weird ocean fiction. This is her second year with RUX and being part of a more collaborative Kentucky makes her heart happy.
Meet our Exchange Director and RUX Co-Founder
Savannah Barrett (she/her, Jefferson County) is the Exchange Director for Art of the Rural and the co-founder of the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange. After eight years of development in Kentucky, she led training and technical assistance to replicate RUX in Minnesota. She previously served as National Programs Director of Next Generation Initiatives at the Rural Policy Research Institute, where she co-led the development of the Next Generation Rural Creative Placemaking Summit and the Rural Generation Summit.
Savannah is a Field Trips to the Future Fellow, a Center for Performance and Civic Practice board member, and an Advisor to the Art of Community: Rural South Carolina and Pennsylvania Humanities. She was Lead Advisor for the Bush Foundation Community Creativity Cohort II, and previously advised the EmcArts’ Community Innovation Lab, RUPRI’s Cultural Wealth Lab, Freedom Maps: a Southern Cultural Fieldscan, and other national roundtables. Savannah holds a Masters of Arts Management from the University of Oregon and has widely published and presented her work, recently at the Kennedy Center Arts Summit and Rural Women’s Summit. She is a member of Alternate ROOTS and a Kentucky Colonel. Savannah is a twelfth-generation Kentuckian and was raised in Grayson Springs, where she co-founded a local arts agency in high school and now stewards six acres of her family home place. She lives in South Louisville with her husband and daughter.