The center of Performing Our Future’s first phase was a community cultural development residency in Roadside/Appalshop’s home county in the east Kentucky coalfields—during the final days of the century-long coal mono-economy. This residency resulted in a play, The Future of Letcher County, as well as the formation of the Letcher County Culture Hub: a county-wide network of community-based organizations, working together to build a future where “we own what we make.” The Culture Hub would later become a founding delegation of the Performing Our Future national coalition.