“Get Dirty, Eat Well, and Make Art”: Reflecting on 25 Years of Wormfarm Institute with Donna Neuwirth & Jay Salinas

Meet Donna Neuwirth and Jay Salinas, co-Founders of Wormfarm Institute, a cross-sector arts and culture organization rooted in Sauk County, Wisconsin.

Apr 27, 2026

Podcast Interview conducted by Matthew Fluharty with Art of the Rural REPOSTED

Meet Donna Neuwirth and Jay Salinas, co-Founders of Wormfarm Institute, a cross-sector arts and culture organization rooted in Sauk County, Wisconsin, in the heart of the Driftless region of the Upper Midwest.

Over thirty years ago, Jay and Donna made a leap of faith, leaving behind Chicago and the city’s vibrant arts scene for a forty-acre dairy farm in Wisconsin. Out of this experiment grew one of the most inventive and influential models for artistic, cultural, and agricultural stewardship in rural communities, a way of seeing connections embodied in Wormfarm’s notion of the cultureshed.

“[The cultureshed is] the idea that the whole of a region’s culture — that means chefs and farmers and businessmen who are all forming the culture of a region — speaks to and is inspired by the place in which it emerges, but also has a capacity to speak clearly and coherently outside of its region.” —Jay Salinas

From this foundation, Jay and Donna built a residency program rooted in the simple, generative idea of invitation – welcoming artists to visit, stay, and pitch in with the labor of a working farm. As we learn in this conversation, all of the work that has garnered Wormfarm such attention and respect continues to be rooted in those relationships and conversations that can be exchanged across a bean row.

As we learn, this ethos led to some of the Institute’s most well-known work: the Farm/Art DTour, a ten-day, fifty-mile, self-guided drive across Sauk County, punctuated by temporary art installations, pasture performances, and roadside poetry; and Fermentation Fest, a celebration of the deep connections between food, land, and culture.

“We invented something where we could be who we are and could be products of our urban environment and bring some attention to these spaces, ways of life, and important land uses that we believe more people should pay attention to in urban areas as well as in rural areas.” —Donna Neuwirth

Across all these efforts, Wormfarm has cultivated a web of cross-sector partnerships that weave together farmers, ecologists, choreographers, sculptors, and community members across the Midwest.

This conversation scans from Wormfarm’s history forward into their visions for the future, and what can emerge out of deep attention to place, culture, and ecology – and where those soundings might take all of us.

Learn more and support Wormfarm Institute at wormfarminstitute.org.