‘Following a thread’: How Connie Smith Day came to be

It started last September, at a meeting in Volunteer Hall at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds, where a group of residents began tossing around ideas for projects that might help revitalize Boulder.

A pop-up art gallery, one suggested. Or a permanent arts center. Removing the medians from Main Street, and beautifying downtown. Improving the community’s emergency ambulance service.

They were ideas inspired by entrepreneurial efforts in other small towns — and the first, baby steps of ReImagining Boulder, the local manifestation of Reimagining Rural, a statewide initiative to catalyze citizen-led civic changemaking in small towns.