Registration Now Open!

We're very excited to announce that registration is now open for this year's Rural Heritage Institute: Is Local Enough? Promises and Limits of Local Action from June 18-20 at Sterling College in Craftsbury Common, Vermont.


Are there limits to local thinking?


What is the relationship between rural and local? 


What is the role of local knowledge in an age of globalization?

Join us at Sterling College in Craftsbury Common, Vermont from June 18th - 20th for Is Local Enough? Promises and Limits of Local Action to explore these questions as well as the developing dialogue between local and global concerns as it applies to economy, agri culture, history, food, culture and rural identity.

Part of the third annual Rural Heritage Institute, Is Local Enough?, will include a diverse range of workshops, presentations and fea tured events.  Located at the heart of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, the Institute capitalizes on the model of community and experiential learning at the center of the Sterling College curriculum and apparent throughout the surrounding communities.

Featured Presentations

Film showing and discussion Under the Cloak of Darkness: Vermont’s Migrant Mexican Farm Workers with Chris Urban and Erin Shea

Listen Globally, Sing Locally: Traditional Folk Music in Rural Vermont with Pete Sutherland

A Vision for Healthy Food Culture and Sustainable Farming in New England – Brian Donahue (author of American Georgics: Readings in American Agrarianism; The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord; Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town) and Mateo Kehler, owner of Jasper Hill Farm and The Cellars at Jasper Hill.

The Ways of the Woods Exhibit from The Northern Forest Center.

Selected Presentations & Workshops

Local Sustainability and Worldwide Movements

Small Farms and Agricultural Policy

Decentralizing Power:  Secession as a Path to Sustainability

Voices from the Fields and the Barnlot

Telling our Stories: Getting to the Heart of What Matters Most in Communities

Bioregional Cosmopolitanism: Reasserting the Local, Reimagining the Global

Local Democracy Unbound:  A Hopeful Narrative

Reading and Writing the Rural Landscape

Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest

Local Fiber, Dyeing, and Clothing

Migrant Workers, Local Agriculture, and Traditional Foods

Listen Globally, Sing Locally: Traditional Folk Music in Rural Vermont



To register or for more information, please visit the Sterling College website and download the registration form.