Joy Jinks is the co-founder of Swamp Gravy, a folk life play produced annually by the Colquitt/Miller Arts Council. She is a retired social worker and founder of the Colquitt Children Center. She serves on the boards of the Miller County Family Connection, the Community Development Corporation of Southwest Georgia, the Colquitt Downtown Development Authority and Andrew College. She earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in social work from Florida State University.
“We will create our own future by celebrating ourselves, the richness of our stories, the talent of our musicians and the creativity of the human spirit.”
February 5, 2009 Art & Culture as Economic Development Joy Jinks, Co-founder, Swamp Gravy
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A city set upon a hill is an iconic image which has guided Western civilization. Another iconic image that has inspired this generation is what Martin Luther King spoke of as the Beloved Community. The vision of a beloved community is a community where its members care enough for each other to nurture the heart and soul of the community.
Because Colquitt, Georgia is a small town of 2,000 it is easier to think of it as a community rather than a city set on a hill. Colquitt is famous for storytelling and here is the story of how it all began.
Once upon a time there was a little town is Southwest Georgia in the ninth poorest Congressional district in the United States. Times were hard, more than half the population had moved to the cities to find work. The people left behind wrung their hands in dismay, seeking a solution.
The choices were a prison, a chicken processing plant, or a solid waste dump, the usual economic development opportunities in rural communities. The people of the town said no to all three, knowing that these were symbols of death, not life. We deserve better than this; the people said, “We will create our own future by celebrating ourselves, the richness of our stories, the talent of our musicians and the creativity of the human spirit.”
The choice made that day was to use the talent of the people to forge an alternative economy based on the arts and culture, that is, a cultural tourism industry. And the rest of the story has become legendary.
So we began to cook up some Swamp Gravy.
Swamp Gravy, Georgia’s Folk Life Play, is performed each March and October. A new production based on stories of our community is mounted in Cotton Hall, a state of the art theatre in a renovated cotton warehouse. Just so we don’t take ourselves too seriously, May Haw, a take-off of the old Hee-Haw radio show is interspersed throughout the year. The Youth Theatre and New Life Learning Center ensure opportunities for the young people to develop their talents.
Setting the tone for our town is our public art in the form of story telling murals. Fourteen beautiful murals adorn formerly unsightly downtown walls and welcome tourists to Georgia’s First Mural City. Visitors from all over the world will come when Colquitt hosts the Global Mural, Arts and Culture Tourism Conference in October, 2010.
And since creativity attracts creativity, another “think outside the box person,” Ralph Wilcox, has built the JoKaRa-Micheaux sound stage in the industrial park and has completed the first movie, The Lena Baker Story, to be released in February.
Colquitt has become a teaching/learning community as people come from across the U.S. to learn about story-based plays, mural creation and movie making at the annual “Building Creative Communities” conferences held each February.
The Beloved Community becomes a beacon on a hill as people pilgrim to experience the art, the culture and the caring that is Colquitt.
