Bison to join national “Interdependence Relay” with community potluck and Kithship Commons Launch

What does it mean to belong to a place—and to one another?

On Thursday, August 27, Bison will become part of a year-long, 50-state project called the Interdependence Relay, bringing together communities across the country to consider what we owe one another and what kind of future we want to build together.

The Bison gathering, hosted by Kithship Collective and Roots & Grass Theater Co., will take place at the Sheep Shed Café and will feature a community potluck highlighting local foods, stories, and the people who make this corner of the prairie home.

The Interdependence Relay was created in response to America’s 250th anniversary. Rather than attempting to tell one grand story about the United States, the project is asking communities in all 50 states to gather locally and answer two questions:

What is our commitment to each other, locally?

What is our commitment to a nation of gatherers?

The relay began in April and is traveling from state to state, carrying a physical box that each community adds something to—a written commitment, an object, a recipe, a story, or whatever feels meaningful to that particular place. The box will eventually arrive in Maine in spring 2027, carrying pieces of all 50 communities with it.

Bison’s contribution will begin, appropriately enough, around a shared table. The August 27 potluck will invite community members to bring a dish featuring local or regionally sourced food and will also mark the public kickoff of a new two-year initiative with the Department of Public Transformation’s Activate Rural Learning Lab, through which Kithship Collective and Roots & Grass Theater Co. will continue developing the Kithship Commons in Bison.

Kithship Commons is envisioned as a creative “third place” on the prairie—a space where people can gather to eat, make art, learn, tell stories, grow food, share knowledge, and build relationships. The project emerged from an existing collection of community efforts, including the Sheep Shed Café, a community garden and seed library, artist residencies and writers’ retreats, and Roots & Grass Theater Co.’s place-based performances and workshops.

Over the next two years, the Activate project will help the organization move toward a more sustainable, year-round version of this vision, including improving shared gathering and performance spaces, strengthening garden and seed-saving programs, developing artist and educational programming, and building the infrastructure needed to steward the space collectively.

“The Interdependence Relay gives us a wonderful opportunity to ask the question together: What does it look like to care for one another here, in this particular place?” says Eliza Blue, director of Roots & Grass Theater Co. and a member of Kithship Collective. “And then the Kithship Commons gives us a place to keep practicing that care.”

For a small, remote prairie community, joining a 50-state project might seem like a big undertaking, but the Interdependence Relay is built around the belief that the most important work of creating community happens at a human scale: around tables, in gardens, in kitchens, in libraries, in classrooms, on front porches, and anywhere else people gather together.

Community members are invited to join the potluck on Thursday, August 27, at the Sheep Shed Café. Bring a dish if you can, and come ready to imagine what we might build together.

The Interdependence Relay: 50 communities. One traveling box. A chance to celebrate together.