Our first opportunity to hit the ground in Fayette County was nothing short of informative and a little eye-opening, to say the least. My peers and I were received with incredible hospitality at the Touchstone Center for Crafts, nestled inside Farmington’s woods. The location itself is a nifty, unique residency and center for the arts, where aspiring professionals or passionate individuals can engage in workshops that provide education in blacksmithing, glassblowing, jewelry work, and more. They provide lodging to artists for weeks at a time, and we had the fortune to use their facilities as a home base for the weekend we spent in neighboring towns. The evening wrapped up with a hearty supper, s’mores, and a fireside chat, setting a positive tone for the full day ahead.
The following morning, we started the day by grounding ourselves in local history, learning about Fayette County’s rich past of coal, industry, and coke (fuel). The Coal and Coke Heritage Center, part of Penn State’s now-closing Eberly Campus, details the small but important facets of a coal miner’s daily life that mostly go unheard in the average American education, as it pertains to the 19th-century Industrial period and Midwestern heavy industry. With every step through the exhibit, you’re greeted with fascinating facts of life that these folk lived, from how the daily food for families was sourced, cooked, and rationed, to how most career and financial services like payroll and taxes were done at your nearby General Store. Our guide, a working librarian, was a wealth of knowledge herself; did you know there’s no statistic as to how many Irish immigrants were employed by Andrew Carnegie along the Fayette mines, as he purposely documented them as British out of spite? Crazy stuff!
Turning our sights to the present day, we made our way to Connellsville’s canteen, where we’d meet with various stakeholders and town officials involved in Connellsville’s economic redevelopment to shape our goals with additional perspective. Doubling as a communal meeting space and diner, the canteen’s walls were lined with WWII memorabilia, spanning medals, a Purple Heart, weapons, Nazi flags, and more. It was here that I was first struck with a sense of unrelenting pride from the community for their friends, family, and peers. I’ve seen patriotic towns display their fallen veterans upon banners that adorned the streets’ lamps, but this was truly something more. There was a greater appreciation for history, for culture, and its people around these parts. Every action on behalf of the town and county at large is a badge of honor worn by everyone. To me, this pride and sense of community are the greatest assets attributable to Fayette County. Storefronts and infrastructure will come and go with time and trends, but this intangible gold they have cannot be recreated, and it’s the fuel to further and future efforts.
The business cohort then met with Crystal Simmons, Director at the RACU (Redevelopment Authority of the City of Uniontown) and UBDA (Uniontown Business District Authority). We exchanged ideas as to how to survey the population of Uniontown for information that would inform a brand identity for the business district. Similar to the personnel at the canteen, Crystal clearly had her priorities with the people; she aimed to prop up the perspective of the average resident and sought to diminish any chance that we, as the University, could overstep our boundaries. With renewed confidence, we pursued what was left of our excursion, simply to see Uniontown and its residents themselves, and what it had to offer. With the utmost care and consideration, I’d describe my biggest surprise of the trip as the dissonance between people’s character and spirit, and what we actually saw of the town. The downtown business district had a plentiful share of CPA firms and attorneys’ offices, adjacent to banks, a few bars, and the sole coffee shop we made note of down the road. It’s the fact that this is what I walked away with as my impression that has me stalling; where’s the identity?
Despite it being Friday afternoon, the streets were void of any people. No kids, no young adults, not a soul. No murals climbed across the brick walls of the district, no ivy sprawling up and down. For every little landmark or artistic endeavor we could find around the area, there were 3-4 parking lots to drown them out. As we looked further, we came a bit to our senses as to why this may be; where would people go? I began to make a mental list of third spaces that Uniontown had available that weren’t centered around alcohol like a bar, and the list started and stopped with the sole coffee shop we had encountered. There’s a public library at the disposal of the residents, though I’d consider it a stretch to deem such as a third space completely separate from home, work, and school. We took to the same streets the following morning on Saturday to attempt some on-site surveying of business owners, and I unfortunately made note that our concerns were reaffirmed. The aforementioned coffee shop was actually much fuller that morning, confirming it to be the only establishment of its kind in the area.
We spoke to the owners and/or employees of tattoo parlors, beauty salons, antique stores, and more, whoever we could find ourselves in front of that morning. They all shared the same demeanor as Crystal and the Connellsville officials– one of eagerness to uplift those around them and to help us as young professionals. Though, I just couldn’t shake such a contrast between the people we spoke to and the relatively bleak town they lived in. It didn’t seem like the product of entirely brain drain, lack of economic activity, or a small career pool; I started to develop the suspicion of a social rift that lay underneath.
A brand identity is comprised mostly of two factors, one being a main visual identity that serves the purpose of recognition, association, and marketing. The other is a business identity, the commerce that actually sits in the driver’s seat of the supposed brand identity– the product that the marketing surrounds. Uniontown and Fayette County at large can certainly have the means to provide work and commerce to their people. There’s an abundance of work in engineering and industry to be had, as mechanical automation only calls for more expertise and hands-on in the field. Uniontown did not have a shortage of opportunities for new college graduates in accounting, finance, or law, either. What I’m getting at is that the business side of the identity by no means is destitute, though there’s another side that has gone untreated: the social capital that Uniontown and adjacent towns have to offer.
If you get a new college graduate from, say, the University of Pittsburgh, to move to Uniontown, and take up work at the CPA firm down the road from them, what will keep them there aside from the work? Career opportunity cannot be the sole pull factor, just like how it’s not the sole issue. There needs to be just as much attention paid to third spaces, social outlets, and communal growth that includes newcomers into the societal ranks, as there is to explicit economic growth; they really do go hand in hand. In consideration of this observation, I believe the best next steps for our ACRI chapter’s initiative are to look to the void in social capital we see before us. Through the business cohort’s survey, which includes demographics from students to town officials, I’d love to obtain as many perspectives from residents as we can. What do people there think of the downtown, what’s missing, what works? Especially for students or those approaching the age where they’d leave town for opportunity, what’s drawing them away? What would instead keep them there? I believe the youth of Uniontown would have important things to say about this and are a rather untouched source of opinion.
I sought to keep Crystal’s words of advice at the forefront of my mind, that the clients’ words and opinions are what shape our next steps, as we’re here to aid them in their efforts, and platform what they have to say. I’m looking forward to seeing what social commentary the residents of Uniontown have for their surroundings, if certain opinions are unanimously shared but go unspoken or fall on deaf ears. What these folk have to say dictates what’s next for their Brand Identity!