May Day Mash to celebrate community
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A “May Day Mash” is being held on the square at the courthouse shelter house May 1 from 4-6 p.m.
Join your family, friends and neighbors for this special night of socializing while enjoying live music, creating a personalized may basket to share with neighbors, and potting a plant to take home.
The event is being hosted by a class of art and design students from Iowa State University in the College of Design to celebrate our community.
The student group includes multiple disciplines including Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Interior Design, and Integrated Visual Arts.
The class is exploring unique rural communities in Iowa, like Mount Ayr, that are thriving in different ways. Each community being studied has been able to protect quality of life and community services for their residents even as they lose population.
Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the class is part of Iowa State University’s Rural Shrink Smart project. Rather than seeing shrinking towns as problematic or failing, they are recognizing them as a reality to be embraced and understood.
Their goal is to develop tools to help all small and shrinking communities actively plan for shrinkage before population loss affects their quality of life and assist small towns’ efforts to thrive.
These resources will be free, easily accessible, and will include modules highlighting quality of life, social capital, economic development, and other opportunities for growth in small towns.
Rural areas often have unique opportunities in challenges, especially in community outreach and art, and the group studying our community believes Mount Ayr prospers in many ways.
