Carlton and Brandi Turner are artists, arts advocates, and co-founders and co-directors of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production, also known as Sipp Culture. Sipp Culture uses arts and agriculture to support rural community, cultural, and economic development in Utica, Mississippi. The organization operates three distinct facilities: a renovated 1920s historic home, a downtown commercial storefront, and seventeen acres of green space and agricultural farmland. Their projects range from artist residencies and community outreach around foodways and storytelling, to economic development initiatives and agricultural apprentice programs.
THIS LAND is funded in part by a grant from South Arts with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional support provided by the Mississippi Arts Commission.
"Neither nature nor people alone can produce human sustenance, but only the two together, culturally wedded."
– Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America
Sipp Culture is already conducting meaningful work, even as they envision and begin to execute a decades-long development plan to fully activate their unique cultural and community spaces.
The conceptual graphics below were developed in collaboration with the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio with input from community members.
Carlton and Brandi discuss the vision for the organization, and how the histories and possibilities of place are shaping the nonprofit's aspirational work.
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