Events

Patrick Overton, Ph.D.

Patrick Overton serves as director of the Front Porch Institute in Astoria, Oregon.  The Institute, created in 1996, is dedicated to creating resources for rural and small communities through innovative community cultural development practice.  A nationally recognized community cultural developer, Overton received the 1997 Missouri Governor’s Award in recognition of his lifelong contribution to the arts and culture in Missouri and his tireless work to give voice to rural/small communities and the contribution they make to the development of our culture.

Overton was Associate Professor at Columbia College and served as Director for the College’s Center for Community & Cultural Studies between 1987-1999.  In 1999, Dr. Overton left his tenured teaching position to focus full-time on the work of the Front Porch Institute.  Working extensively with rural and small communities, the Institute provides organizational development and strategic planning services for rural/small communities-based nonprofit organizations as well as community cultural development and planning for city and county governments.  He has spent much of the last twenty years of his life working in under-served, rural and small communities all across the United States to help them identify, nurture, and celebrate their “Rural Genius.”

His most recent speaking engagements include the 2008 Creative Construct International Symposium in Ottawa where he made a presentation entitled “Engaging the Democracy of Civil Discourse.”  He was a keynote speaker at the 2008 Wyoming Historic Preservation Conference; the 2007 Montana Arts Council State Leadership Program; the 2007 Wyoming State Arts Summit, the 2007 Minnesota Arts Board State Conference to name a few.  He was also Keynote Speaker for the NEA Sponsored Regional Conference Building Creative Economies: The Arts,Entrepreneurship, and Sustainable Development in Appalachia in 2002.  Among his Academic and Professional Honors, he was the University of Missouri Thomas Jefferson Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in 2004 and recipient of the 2001 Robert E. Gard Award presented by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.  In the summer of 2006 he facilitated the Nez Perce Healing Conference held in conjunction with the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial Signature Event.

Among his current projects, he serves as Project Director of the New Richmond Area Community Front Porch Project in New Richmond, Wisconsin, a community of 8,500.The goal of this project is to implement the goals from the community cultural assessment and community cultural plan working with representatives from the New Richmond City Government; surrounding Townships, the School District, and numerous arts/heritage/cultural community-based, nonprofit organizations to address the growing lack of civil discourse that has challenged the community.   In addition, he is overseeing a new $150,000 grant from the Bremer Foundation to design and implement the Leadership Trust Initiative, a leader-development training opportunity offered during the next three years.  In Brigham City, Utah, a geographically isolated community of 17,000 in NW Utah, Overton facilitates a ten million dollar Cultural Center and cultural district including the restoration and renovation of the Christensen Dancing & Music Academy, honoring the three Christensen Brothers who formed the San Francisco Ballet. 

Obtaining a Ph.D. in Communication, Overton studied as a Gregory Fellow and College of Arts and Science Graduate Fellow at the University of Missouri (1984-1987).  His research concentration was organizational communications with collateral work in community development.  In 1985, he began teaching at Columbia College in Columbia, Missouri where he eventually became a tenured Associate Professor of Communication and Cultural Studies.  He left that position in 1999 to devote full time to his work with the Institute. 

During his fifteen years at Columbia College, Overton designed and implemented the College’s Religions Studies Program, funded by a grant from the Disciples of Christ Division of Higher Education.  He also designed the communication program that included the design and implementation of all performance courses (speech/oral interpretation/theatre) as well as courses in communication theory (Understanding Human Communication/ Intercultural/Interpersonal/ Organizational Communication/Arts and Cultures of Our World).  In addition to his teaching duties, from 1987-1995 he served as Director of the Columbia College Center for Community & Cultural Studies. In this position he designed and implemented the campus community arts program including the development of a concert series (both local and non local arts performers and organizations); a lecture programs focusing on cultural diversity, Symposia and Conferences, and Campus Community Forums, featuring faculty and staff.   

In this capacity, he served as project director for the seven-year, Columbia College Cultural Diversity and Values Project, a campus community development program funded by a $50,000 grant from the 3M Foundation.  In addition, he created and administered the Middle States Consortium of Statewide Assemblies, bringing staff from these organizations to the Center for Community & Cultural Studies for professional development training from 1987-1992.

Prior to obtaining his Ph.D., Overton received a Master of Arts in Theology (1975) and a Master of Divinity from Christian Theological Seminary (1976).  He was ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in 1976.  An ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) he has served as a bi-vocational parish minister to rural and small community churches for over thirty years.  He also directed the Religious Studies Program at Columbia College, designing the curriculum and teaching the courses as part of his responsibility as Associate Professor of Communication and Cultural Studies.    

Overton has extensive practice experience in rural and small community cultural development as well as organizational and professional development for nonprofit organizations and institutions.  From 1976-1984, he served as Director of the Friends of Historic Boonville Community Arts Program in Boonville, Missouri, a community of 6,500.  During that time, his responsibilities included being in charge of Thespian Hall, the oldest theatre in continuous use west of the Allegheny Mountains.  In addition, he was responsible for the design, implementation, and administrative oversight of the community arts program including a concert series, arts education program for the schools, community art show, and the Missouri River Festival.  The Boonville Community Arts Program was recognized for its innovation and success by receiving the 1984 Governor’s Arts Award, the first such award granted to a community arts program in the state of Missouri.

He is the founding President and first Executive Director of the Missouri Association of Community Arts Agencies (MACAA) in 1979 and served as its first Executive Director (1984- 1989).  MACAA provided community arts development resources for over seventy rural/small communities in Missouri creating and delivering organizational and professional development services to these communities and the paid and non-paid volunteer staff who served them.  He served as Vice-Chair of the Columbia Arts Commission (1988-1989) and was honored by the City of Columbia in 1991 as the Columbia Arts Volunteer of the year. 

Overton is a frequent keynote speaker, workshop leader, and nationally respected community cultural development specialist, focusing on community/cultural planning, organizational development and strategic planning, volunteer leader-development, facility management and restoration, grant writing, fundraising, arts education, conflict resolution and management, and issues related to cultural diversity and intercultural communication.  In 1990, he testified at the Appropriation Hearings of the House Sub-Committee on the Interior, in support of the National Endowment for the Arts.  Later that same year, he delivered testimony to the President’s Independent Commission on the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C., speaking on behalf of the arts in rural and small communities in America.

He has numerous publications including his latest, Rebuilding the Front Porch of America: Essays on the Art of Community Making.  In addition, he served as editor for Grassroots & Mountain Wings: the arts in rural and small communities, author of The Leaning Tree, a
collection of poetry published in 1976, and has published numerous articles and
papers/presentations on community cultural development.  One of his poems, “Faith,” was featured at the end of the Emmy winning documentary “After Good-Bye,” produced by the Dallas PBS station.  In 1998, the poem was featured on the Oprah Winfrey Program.  In addition, several of his poems have been put to music and performed by four major choral groups including the Dallas Turtle Creek Chorale and the University of Missouri Choral Union.
 
As an educator, minister, organizational developer, public speaker, community arts administrator, published poet, playwright, author, theatre producer/director, and visual artist, Overton has devoted his adult life to exploring human communication, designing and building organizational systems that enhance the development of the human community, and creating innovative outreach delivery networks to assist in nurturing rural and small community cultural development.  He has spent most of his adult life promoting his belief that the arts are the voice of the soul struggling to express what it means to be human and be part of the human community.

An avid golfer, he is past Club Champion of the Columbia Country Club and Kemper Golf Club in Missouri and currently holds a five handicap at the Astoria Golf and Country Club.  In 1992, he was appointed Head Golf Coach for the Columbia College Men’s Golf Team and served until 1996 when the program ended.  In 1994, the team won its first Conference Championship and Overton was named the NAIA American Midwest Conference Golf Coach of the Year.  In 1995, the College added the Women’s Golf Team to his duties, which, at the end of their first season, earned an “at-large” invitation the inaugural NAIA Women’s National Championship.

Overton currently serves as Vice-Chair of the Astoria Historic Landmarks Commission.  In 2002, he received the Dr. Edward Harvey Historic Preservation Award for his work on renovation and restoration of an historic, early Twentieth Century Arts & Crafts bungalow house in Astoria.  Overton, a native Californian, was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.   Having spent 31 years in the Midwest, he currently lives in Astoria, Oregon, where he resides with his wife, Lindi.