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Polk County News Polk County Itemizer-Observer • October 26, 2016 5A Folk: Festival in its second year Continued from Page 1A Want to do more than just listen and watch? The What: Polk County festival’s “jam” area gives Folklife Festival. musical attendees a chance Where: Polk County to join in the fun, led by Fairgrounds & event Cen- jam master Truman Price. ter. “If you are a local artist When: Saturday 10 a.m. and you’ve got your guitar to 8 p.m. or your fiddle, you can Admission: $10 per bring that,” Johnson said. person or $5 and five cans “There will be an area spec- of food to benefit ified, so you can sit around Willamette Valley Food the room and play and Assistance Program in Dal- las. Children 12 and jam.” younger are free. If all the listening to Of note: Festival organ- music (or playing), dancing izers are looking for ideas and wandering among ven- for the festival. Have any- dor booths has you hungry thing you would like to and thirsty, Folklife has see in future years? Send local cuisine and libations suggestions to info@polk- on hand. countyfolklife.com. Black Rock BBQ, Critelli Sweets & Eats, and the fair- grounds caterer will be serving local favorites. Rogue Ales and Airlie Winery will be pouring in the wine and beer gar- den. Johnson said Folklife’s goal for this weekend is to show- case art, especially traditional forms, in all its variety in one place. “As we all started to come together as a group, our vi- sion is to bring a variety of music and performing arts and food, to see the cultural differences that are here locally that maybe you don’t get to see on a regular basis,” she said. “That is what our main goal is, to bring all of that, so people can see that there still is a tradition in handmade, handcrafted (art).” Check it out eMILY MenTzeR/Itemizer-Observer Emily Gluckin is working with the Polk County Rural Tourism Studio to help promote the area. Gluckin RARE works tourism By Emily Mentzer The Itemizer-Observer www.polkio.com POLK COUNTY — Emily Gluckin has already started breathing new life and ener- gy into the Polk County Rural Tourism Studio, a proj- ect that kicked off in January 2015. Gluckin, 23, is a volunteer with Resource Assistance for Rural Environment, an Americorps program. She is working with the Rural Tourism Studio focus groups to help further plans and get the gears moving on attract- ing tourists to Polk County. She studied environmen- tal studies in college, with a concentration on sustain- ability and a minor in green building and community design. She was in Montana doing another Americorps program when she heard someone talking about “this Pencil us in! www.polkio.com cool-sounding program that focused on planning and was in Oregon,” Gluckin re- called. She was working at a bike- ped advocacy organization, which will come in handy for the tourism efforts in Polk County. “It’s kind of like my posi- tion last year was a small piece of planning, and my interests are really on a broader scale,” Gluckin said. Gluckin hadn’t thought about the role tourism plays in community planning. “The more I looked into (this) position and thought a b o u t t h e p r o j e c t s, i t seemed like a perfect fit,” she said. “I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before. It’s community develop- ment. I really like the process of creating experi- ences in a community.” Tourism is creating public spaces that make people want to visit, or make people who live in a community proud of it, Gluckin said. “A big factor of this job is working with a lot of different people and different towns and different players in the tourism field,” she said. “I’m really excited to learn how tourism affects a place, how it affects the people who live there, and how it affects peo- ple who are visiting.” With the work done by the Rural Tourism Studio com- mittees, Gluckin has a solid starting point. “They’ve gotten a lot done since (2015),” Gluckin said. “Our goal is to reboot that effort and get people moti- vated to be involved and get some projects on the table. One of my main roles will be facilitator of that process — coordinating meetings, cre- ating action steps from those meetings, hopefully get some fun projects organ- ized.” Gluckin has the perfect h o b b i e s t o c o o rd i n a t e tourism efforts in Polk County — she loves hiking and mountain biking, and is learning quickly about the wine industry — not to mention the potential tourism draw of the 2017 total solar eclipse in August. “We’re right in the path of totality, and apparently Polk County has the best average weather forecast for that time of year out of anywhere in the country,” Gluckin said. “I think it’s going to be big. I think my main role in that will be coordination — getting businesses involved, starting now, making sure people know it’s happening, and plan accordingly.” Get involved: egluckin@ ci.independence.or.us. OReGOn VALLeY BOYS/Itemizer-Observer Oregon Valley Boys will headline Folklife.
