• Survey of Rural Challenges
  • Small Town Speaker Becky McCray
  • Shop Local video
  • SaveYour.Town

Small Biz Survival

The small town and rural business resource

A row of small town shops
  • Front Page
  • Latest stories
  • About
  • Guided Tour
  • Subscribe
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
  • RSS

Where’s your town’s future mural?

By Becky McCray

Every town needs a future mural, or a series of them. Seems like every small town has a history-themed mural, but very few have a future-themed or even modern-style mural. Many towns use old photos as displays, including in empty buildings. They do get people talking about what you used to have. But how are you […]

April 22, 2019 Filed Under: community, rural Tagged With: arts, future, trends

Dress up empty buildings with these creative window ideas

By Becky McCray

  Every small town has empty buildings downtown. Whether they are completely empty or just used for storage, they can make your downtown look vacant. If the building has windows, though, there’s an opportunity to dress them up a bit and maybe even promote another business at the same time. In the picture above, a […]

June 11, 2018 Filed Under: economic development, marketing, rural Tagged With: arts, empty buildings, empty windows, future, history, marketing, window decorations, window ideas

« Previous Page

Howdy!

Glad you dropped in to the rural and small town business blog, established in 2006.

We want you to feel at home, so please take our guided tour.

Meet our authors on the About page.

Have something to say? You can give us a holler on the contact form.

If you would like permission to re-use an article you've read here, please make a Reprint Request.

Want to search our past articles? Catch up with the latest stories? Browse through the categories? All the good stuff is on the Front Page.

Partners

We partner with campaigns and organizations that we think best benefit rural small businesses. Logo with "Shop Indie Local"Move Your Money, bank local, invest localMulticolor logo with text that says "Global Entrepreneurship Week"Save Your Town logotype

More of the best of Small Biz Survival

Copyright © 2026 Becky McCray
Front Page · Log in