♪I'm giving up on settling down♪ ♪Getting out of this small town ♪Hang a sign this heart is close ♪Imma hit the open road ♪Im giving up on settling down Ridgway is an interesting place it was a former railroad town.

It served the mining industry in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and then over the course of the next century the mining disappeared, the railroads went away.

There was a time when there were probably less than 200 people living in this whole town.

(Music) When you travel and you tell people, "I'm from Trinidad," at first they're, "Oh, Trinidad and Tobago?"

No, not that one, another one.

(Music) It was originally a town on the Santa Fe Trail trading town, so people had to be tough and they had to fight for things and they had to figure things out.

So the creativity part of Trinidad, I think, has always been here We're what we call a boom and bust community.

We have flourished and then busted and then flourished and busted.

For a while it was coal, for a while it was wood, later it was natural gas, and we're just coming out of our most recent bust.

So we're ready to go, but we haven't done that much yet.

We're just getting started.

(Music) The original True Grit movie starring John Wayne was recorded or filmed here in 1969, and a lot of the locals at the time managed to be extras in the movie, and there are still remnants of the filming around town.

The cupola on the firehouse was never there before, and they built that for the movie to make it look a little bit more like a classic firehouse.

They made them out of fiberglass.

They looked like they were shake shingles, like wood shingles, but they were fiberglass.

And there was one little remnant to that at one point behind the Shebino.

I think it's gone now.

I've always thought it was sort of funny because in the movie True Grit, it's supposedly Fort Smith, Arkansas.

So there's a building downtown in Ridgway that has a sign painted on it that says the Fort Smith Saloon.

And so there's all these just little remnants.

And now that it's well past 50 years old, it's a part of our history, but it's sort of a funny part of our history because we're not Fort Smith, Arkansas.

♪Im married to the mountains ♪The rivers and the roads ♪They take me as I am ♪They make me feel at home From about the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, Ridgway was supposed to be inundated by a reservoir.

It was going to be completely flooded.

There's a great history book written by a local woman who's since passed away, but it's called "Ridgway, Colorado the Town that Refused to Die" And it's just a great history of the town and how all of this stuff affected it.

(Music) I'd been working at a wholesale stained glass supply house in Boulder and doing stained glass as a hobby in my spare time.

When I moved here, I spent the next 25 years creating alpine art glass and working as a glass artist in the area.

And it's been great, actually.

I'm now in my 13th year.

At the end of this term, it'll be 14 years as mayor and 26 on council.

Being a major part of the evolution of this town and seeing it really sort of blossom into something that a lot of the old-timers never thought they'd see.

(Birds chirping) Back in 2008 to 2010, at the time, Hickenlooper was the governor.

He created a program called the Bottom Up Initiative with the idea that the best way to find new forms of economic development is from the bottom up, is from the local areas, instead of top down, instead of the state telling everybody what they should be doing.

And one of the initiatives in that process came out of the state legislature.

They created a creative district certification program.

(Music) The creative districts legislation was initiated as a way to really unify communities around a common vision that centers arts, culture, and the creative industries.

Now prior to the act, there were a few established but organically formed creative districts.

But they didn't necessarily have the overarching framework or the formal support from Colorado.

(Music) The Colorado Creative Industries initiatives have been very beneficial for institutions like Museo de las Americas.

The most important for us right now is where we are located: Art District district on Santa Fe.

(Music) (Music) By being part of this district, we became a group and we support each other.

And that brings more voices, more representation, and that attracts more visitors.

The businesses also get sales as well as artists on the streets.

For us, it brings economic growth, connections, and engagement.

(Music) ♪Woke up this morning ♪ now watch me step We are nonprofit for art supplies located on a block of a ton of galleries in the Santa Fe Arts District.

Of course, with any nonprofit, we've been growing slowly over time.

And as one business with four employees, we couldn't do it without them.

(Music) So it's just been a great way to meet people in the community and spread joy and make connections and find opportunities.

I don't know, I love Denver.

There's so many artists that live here and connections to make.

So I've been building off that since I moved out here and seeing where it takes me.

(Music) The first Friday has been awesome.

It's been... pushed me outside my comfort zone for sure to kind of interact with more people.

But it's been great exposure and getting my work out.

And I made a couple sales, so that's great too.

(Music) ♪Gon throw my cloths on ♪Tell my crew whats up Our August first Friday had over 10,000 participants that showed up.

So artists had been nurtured and that our entrepreneurial spirit has grown significantly as well.

And what's really been cool about this residency is to kind of bring it down to earth and make it feel more accessible and make it feel like anybody could be a part of this.

So this has been much easier and helpful to just have space by myself to create.

♪Im livin out my fantasy ♪Come on and take a ride with me♪ ♪Im try put ya mind at easy I'm a retired nurse practitioner and this is my first time.

And it's been really fun.

It's been really relaxing and I really appreciate everything I just learned today.

(Music) You know, it's so great that we have a community that hosts events like this, that people make this happen.

It just adds to the whole livability of the Denver Metro area.

So I wish I had discovered it sooner, but I'll be back.

(Music) So when they announced that they were putting all of this together into creative industries and that they were opening to creative districts, that was a new bill, a new initiative, it was like, "Hmm, that sounds like something we'd be interested in."

So we tried to bridge that.

We started going to meetings and, you know, put things together in such a way that we knew the people who were making some of the decisions.

And we had a voice.

We raised our hands a lot and said, "What about rural areas?"

So, no, I never felt it was impossible.

(Music) If there is one word that describes this community, it's resilient.

We are resilient.

We're fighters.

Downtown Trinidad was on the verge of being a ghost town, and I've seen it happen to a lot of communities.

And Trinidad was going that direction.

There's a poem entitled, "Everything is going to be all right."

And I said, "That's perfect for Trinidad.

Trinidad, everything is going to be all right.

We're going to thrive.

We're going to survive."

When we first got here, buildings were boarded up and roofs were falling in, and the sidewalks were buckled.

It wasn't the most beautiful place around.

When they started peeling off those facades that were added in the 60s and early 70s, they found these beautiful buildings that had not been destroyed because no one had the money to tear them down and rebuild.

Then we found there's just this joy and gem of architecture.

(Music) ♪Make me work ♪Make me sweat inside ♪Make me feel like Im alive People will ask, "How did you get to Trinidad?"

I'm not certain, but I think that Trinidad called to us and needed us in a moment to say, "We need someone with your energy and your passion and your love.

"So for my family, this is our home because this is where we've chosen.

This is the people we want to be around.

These are the ideals that we want to hold onto, which is protecting who we are as Trinidad.

We're never going to be bigger than we are.

Geographically, we're between two mountains.

So how do we enrich the life for the people that live here, the people that come here, and then the people that visit?

(Music) I was born in Laramie, Wyoming.

When I went to college, I decided I wanted to be a college professor.

So I got my PhD in sociology and spent 35 years doing that.

In 1989, I In 1989, I picked up a book by Betty Edwards that taught me how to draw.

And then one day, I discovered I could draw, and I did have ability.

But when I retired, I needed something to fill up my time and make my life more meaningful.

And so when we moved here, my wife and I, we got involved in the arts community.

And it gave us kind of a home.

It gave us people to know a purpose.

And so it's been a very nice transition.

So I've probably painted about 50 to 100 paintings a year for the last 35 years.

And now people only know me as an artist.

They don't know me as a sociologist any longer.

(Music) ♪‘Cos Im coming up strong ♪‘The grass sure does look greener♪ ♪‘I need a true believer in disguise♪‘ We had Michael McCullough, who was a sculptor and artist, and he was absolutely certain that the governor needed to know about Ridgway, that Ridgway needed to be in the first group of creative districts.

And it brought so many people out, and there was a lot of excitement about really having Ridgway be known as the creative place it already was and has been for a very long time.

(Music) ♪‘Slow living ♪Can be life giving ♪Although we might disagree ♪If most our lives So the town and the creative district and the Main Street program, it all worked together to encourage the state to help us find funding to do this major highway infrastructure program but also to include Clinton Street and our historic Main Street, which at the time was a gravel dirt road with no sidewalks and no trees and fairly barren looking and older buildings that were starting to fall down.

That's the charge I was given when I started, to find a way to bring this part of the community, this historic Main Street, Clinton Street, back to life.

Women being able to like get out of their cars with their high heels on and not have to worry their feet were going to get completely muddy.

It was a joke, but it was true too, that people were afraid to drive off the highway and come over here.

(Music) ♪It makes the gray ♪ so hard to see ♪It makes the gray♪ ♪ so hard to see Our community revitalization grants have been awarded to 59 creative and historic districts all over our state and Main Streets to advance creative industry and arts facilities for iconic arts organizations to make Colorado the best place for artists to start a creative business and build community.

Look at Denver's Art District on Santa Fe with community revitalization projects like Su Teatro and VFW Post 1, the very first VFW post in the United States.

(Music) In Trinidad we have the Fox Theater West and in Ridgway, the old firehouse.

You know, our mission is to make these communities more appealing for visitors and destination tourists and also for business owners.

So I think a lot of the local galleries like myself have benefited from this creative district designation.

Within those grants, it opens up opportunities for artists like myself to think large, think bigger on certain projects.

Every first Friday of the month we hold an event called First Friday Art Walk.

We are open late and people will walk around and check out what new art is on the walls.

And we continue to keep expanding on events like that.

(Music) I started working at the local brewery on the corner, Colorado Boy, and there were really no other businesses here except that.

And so just since 2010, we've been able to really bring this whole part of the street to life.

Downtown Ridgway was really sleepy and quiet and one of the things that many people don't know about is that the Grammy Awards are made in the basement of this building.

So that's kind of a special distinction for our town.

(Music) It takes 15 meticulous hours to assemble each statue piece by piece.

All together we're making 600 Grammys.

This was Taylor Swift dropped when she was holding an arm load of them and it broke and we got her to autograph it for us.

(Music) 800 miles away, surrounded by snow-capped mountains, lies tiny Ridgway, Colorado.

During the Hickenlooper administration, Colorado Creative Industries, Boettcher Foundation, and the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, or DOLA, in partnership with Artspace, launched the Space to Create Colorado program to address the critical housing shortage and housing needs for the creative workforce.

(Music) And I think it took eight years, I'll tell, to get that thing out of the ground and finished and occupied.

(Music) And now we do art shows and workshops and it's just been really fun to see that space get activated and become a real meeting place for the town of Ridgway.

(Music) I didn't have a studio and I was just painting out of my car.

For a really long time I didn't have a big blank wall space to photograph art, you know, and my computer was in one place and I was painting in another place.

It's just so much harder when you don't have it all in one spot.

(Music) It feels like a sense of security for sure.

Housing is incredibly difficult and I have a space where I can come and just sit and have a cup of coffee and ruminate a little bit until an idea comes.

And when you don't have that physical space it's so much harder.

I've been here two years now and I can renew my lease every year.

When you have that stability it frees up room in your mind to think about more creative things because you're not worried about where you're going to live in six months.

And yeah, I just wouldn't have been able to do it, you know, if I was still painting out of my car or whatever.

(Music) When we went to Loveland and he announced that Trinidad would be a demostration project for this, that was another big celebration.

So we closed the streets down and we had a block party and we had music and art and we celebrated.

That building in particular is going to be the Corazón of the Corazón of Trinidad.

That's going to be the heart of the heart of Trinidad.

(Music) So here we have one of the prizes I think from recycling artwork.

These are 14 foot doors that were found as they started demolition.

So now these are conference table in this wonderful conference space so you can see the history of the building and the old part of Trinidad and celebrate that.

(Music) Last night was a fundraising dinner in the space to create.

I can't express to you how I felt when I walked into that dinner and maybe saw four people that I knew, everybody else was new.

Can you imagine what impact that has on a community like Trinidad?

It makes all the downside of what I go through as the mayor totally worth it.

I do it again in a minute because the art has resuscitated Trinidad.

(Music) Especially with the front range growing so fast and all the population from Pueblo to Fort Collins exploding, it's easy to be forgotten when we're part of the small part of Colorado that's not growing.

And so at least we feel like we're getting attention and the government knows we're here and cares about us.

(Music) Our goal was to make Colorado the first state in America famous for being a welcoming home for creative people from everywhere.

(Music) The more creative talent you have, the more technology talent you have, the more business you have, the more they can spend on the arts, more artists come because of the arts.

(Music) It's been a fun run to see how a little town of 400 can blossom into a town of almost 1300 and kind of get on the map.

It used to be if I told people I lived in Ridgway, they'd be like, "Where is that?

And I'd say, "Well, it's between Ouray and Telluride, and if you drove through, you might have blinked and missed it."

But now you meet somebody who says, "Where do you live?"

And I say, "Ridgway."

And they say, "Oh, I love Ridgway.

I know where that is."