Kentucky is #BetterTogether
When you live in a place like Kentucky, you come to expect a little extra attention in the election cycle...and not all of it good. All too often, the national narrative points a finger at our state for the vitriol and partisanship that our nation is experiencing.
Download & reshare this photo with the hashtag #BetterTogether!
The Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange (RUX) network has spent the last decade in Kentucky proving that when we look for common ground, we find it. Kentucky can be a guiding light for this nation to stand together, share our stories, and take care of each other.
This Election Day, help us send a strong message that Kentuckians are connected, and that despite our many differences, we value each other as neighbors.
Join us in using this temporary profile picture and the hashtag #BetterTogether! Use the frame on your own photo via Canva: tinyurl.com/RUXFrame
Need help using the frame? Email us at kentuckyrux@gmail.com or message us on social media and we’ll make a picture for you!
Follow along on social media and join the conversation!
Find us on Facebook (KentuckyRUX) and X & Instagram (@ruxkentucky).
Want to get involved?
Support our work & become a member or donor today at kyrux.org/donate
Check out these stories & testimonials from across the RUX network, highlighting the power of finding common ground from Hickman to Hindman, showing that we are #BetterTogether.
“We have got to humanize other people instead of dehumanizing them. What [The Golden Thread] is about…is uniting people from rural areas and urban areas and sitting down, being real, talking about what we can work on together.”
–Secretary of State Michael G. Adams
“As a Black person, I never really identified with the entire state.” After visiting Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church in western Kentucky, Bernard reflected, “I did not fathom that rich of a history of a Black community out in the middle of western Kentucky…We can’t generalize an entire state or geographic region of the state.”
-Bernard Clay
RUX 2019-22 Cohort Member; RUX 2024 Steering Committee Member; Data Analyst & Affrilachian Poet (Berea)
“You grow together being in RUX intensive weekends...Finding differences and commonalities, while debunking misconceptions about each other. These are people I will carry with me forever.”
–Azucena (Susie) Trejo
RUX 2019-22 Alum, 2024 Steering Committee Member, Artist & Educator (Louisville)
“I’m grateful to be [at The Golden Thread] today with RUX. I think it’s a pretty much testament to their success that a community in Whitesburg, KY, is on the stage at Kentucky Performing Arts...As an Appalachian in Eastern KY, it is so affirming and validating for all of us to be here in these spaces.”
—Valerie Horn
Executive Director, Cowan Community Action Group
Board Chair & Founding Partner, CANE Kitchen (Whitesburg)
“Once I started learning that people shared that experience of being from one place but living in another place, I felt like I found my people. I think it’s a common theme to feel complex about where you’re from.”
—Levi House
RUX 2023-24 Cohort Member; Multimedia Artist; Communications Specialist, KY Department for Behavioral Health (Lexington)
“The same problems we find in our urban areas, we face them also in rural areas.”
—Dee Parker
RUX 2023-24 Cohort Member; Project Manager, Fahe (Hazard)
“RUX made me feel connected to place…to Kentucky. RUX gave me a much deeper understanding and appreciation of the place I am from and the place my family is from.”
—Richard Young
Founding RUX Steering Committee Member; Founder & Executive Director, CivicLex (Lexington)
“RUX was a safe space to engage, and my relationship to the state and my community was transformed in the process. The RUX experience exposed me to a bigger Kentucky community, one that made me feel more connected to my Kentucky identity.”
-LaToya Drake
RUX 2023-24 Cohort Member
UK Extension Specialist for Food Access (Glasgow)
About the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange (RUX)
The Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange (RUX) is a creative leadership program that strengthens professional and intercultural competencies while building connections across racial, economic and geographic divides — towards our shared future. RUX Community Intensives change the context of professional collaboration to help members deepen bonds, inspire stronger accountability, and create the conditions for innovation.
Now in its tenth year, this partnership between Art of the Rural and Appalshop has earned national acclaim in the The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, US News and World Report, and national conferences such as the Rural Women’s Summit and the Kennedy Center Arts Summit. With host communities from every region of the state, RUX has served more than 300 Kentuckians from 65 counties and worked with over 200 partners since its founding in 2014.
Support our work & become part of the movement today at kyrux.org/donate