Podunk

Growing up in a small town in the midwest had a lot of perks. As a kid I was able to spend my summers hopping from lake to lake with one friend to the next without supervision. In a town as small as the one I was raised in you’re free to feel out your youth in a sincere way that many people don’t experience. However — that style of living doesn’t come without a cost. In exchange for an fairytale childhood you trade opportunity. Staying in my town and pursuing a career outside of education, construction/manufacturing, admin, or health wasn’t an option. I don’t think the issue is that jobs outside of those categories can’t be sustained in small towns. Rather — introductions to other opportunities aren’t presented at a young enough age for kids to grow up knowing the potential in other career fields. One of the most threatened subjects in rural areas is the arts. Podunk is a concept developed to combat the lack of exposure to the arts that often times snowballs into an indifference to creative fields in general.

Podunk is a website that is geared towards bringing art based experiences to people in rural areas. Users would create an account on the website with their basic information and attach their location via the GPS locator built into the site. If they live in a town that falls into the population guidelines indicating that they qualify as a small town they would gain access to the content on the site. Everything from live streamed concerts, virtual tours of galleries, and select films currently in theaters would be found on the site.

I’m not sure if it would be a subscription based website or how we’d go about compensating those that allowed their content to be on the site. That is all something that would need to be looked into further. I just remember how frustrating it was growing up as an art-seeking kid and not being able to have a part in it because I lived too far away from a city that could offer those things to me. Podunk is something that would give those looking for more than what their town could offer a platform for satisfying those needs. Talk soon.