Your host.

The host and creator of Small Town/Big Arts is Geoffrey Kershner. As a leader of an arts organization in a smaller community, Geoffrey discovered there were very little resources for those serving small population communities through the arts. This website and podcast are an effort to fill that void.

Geoffrey Kershner is the Chief Executive Officer at the Academy Center of the Arts (Lynchburg, VA) In his time at the Academy, the organization increased need based scholarships for arts programming by 124%, increased the overall operating budget between 2015 and 2019 by 300%, and completed a capital campaign for a historic theatre restoration project which opened its doors in 2018.

Geoffrey has served on the Virginia Commission for the Arts (Area 2 & state wide), Rhode Island Council for the Arts, and ArtsHERE grant review panels and served on the Nomination Advisory Committee and as a panelist for the Mid Atlantic Arts Regional Resilience Fund. He was a member of the National Arts Strategies' 2014-2015 Chief Executive Cohort, is currently a member of the Virginians for the Arts board of directors, and serves on an advisory group for the Radically Rural Conference. He has been a featured speaker at the League of Historic American Theatres and the LMDA national conferences.