News and Events

Carnegie UK Trust was pleased to sponsor the ‘Realising Rural Assets Conference’ on 19th June at the Royal Welsh Showground, Builth Wells. The event, organised by WCVO welcomed Elin Jones, Rural Affairs Minister and Leighton Andrews, Deputy Minister for Regeneration as guest speakers. Mr Andrews said that the Welsh Assembly Government was taking up the Carnegie challenge about the role of asset building and that community ownership of public buildings can have a positive effect in rural communities. He announced that he was looking to establish a community asset fund to allow communities to take over public buildings.

The Deputy Minister said:

This month’s Community Transport Association Journal runs a feature on social accounting and auditing highlighting the action research CTA has been carrying out for Carnegie’s Rural Action Research Programme.

‘In the past 18 months, the CTA has helped 12 organisations across the UK and Ireland to carry out their first social audit. Funding of £36,000 from the Carnegie UK Trust and a further £1,500 from the Community Transport Association Ireland (CTAI) has put community transport managers through training, supported organisations during the process and produced an informative handbook about social auditing for other community transport organisations to draw upon.’

Carnegie partners, ruralnet|uk are hosting their annual conference in the vibrant town of Skipton this year on 30 September to 1 October. The ruralnet|2008 ‘Live and Local’ conference will debate the challenges facing our rural communities and ask if ‘local’ is the answer.

How can rural areas respond to these challenges? And are our rural communities robust enough to meet the structural changes that lie ahead?

To help debate some of these questions, The Soil Association, Land for People community land trust, Little Red Bus Network and The Plunkett Foundation (ViRSA) will all be facilitating workshops at ruralnet|2008. These interactive workshops will stimulate delegates to explore how rural communities can respond to a changing future by embracing the opportunities that lie in re-invigorating localism within our rural areas; Local Food, Local Ownership, Local Transport and Local Retail will all be discussed, along with further workshops on Local Energy and Local ICT.

Wales Council for Voluntary Action, supported by Carnegie UK Trust are hosting a conference on the 19th of June titled 'Realising Rural Assets.' This conference will look in depth into community ownership and management of local assets in the widest, most creative sense, to enable Can-Do Rural Communities. The Rural Affairs Minister, Elin Jones AM Rural Affairs will give the opening address - Realising Rural Assets. Other speakers include; the Deputy Minister for Regeneration, Leighton Andrews AM; Andrew Anderson, Head of Community Land Unit, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Peter Williams, Director of Development Trusts Association Wales.

One of the most successful elements of Carnegie’s rural work to date has been the fact that all our conclusions have been built upon authentic evidence from pioneering rural communities working on the ground to directly inform policy makers. Our partners have told us that the single most effective action for the Trust to take is the continued creation and structuring of opportunities for people to add value to their work by networking, communicating, mentoring, and learning from each other. The Community of Practice will assist this process but we also believe that face-to-face encounters are also important.

2008 sees the last in a series of networking events for our RARP partners. Over the last few months each theme group has met to exchange ideas and progress and also to examine closely the aim of the RARP - to influence policy and practice.

The hill farming group in Cumbria hosted the remote and peripheral partners in March. The theme of this meeting was ‘Finding your way in the Fells: cultural landscape guiding communities communicating about their assets.’ The hill farming group used this meeting to gather thoughts from the other partners, the Celtic Neighbours project and the Eden Foundation on the sustainability of hill farming. An informal dinner was organised with local hill farmers from the Borrowdale valley to encourage a general discussion and then our RARP partners were given the opportunity to visit the farms and conduct more in depth interviews with the farmers themselves. Many interesting issues were raised and some suggestions put forward by the group. The main issue raised and tackled was how to retain young people in this type of farming in the face of increasing challenges. This RARP work continues until 2009 and the feedback from this visit will be fed into the research gathered.

We were back in Cumbria again in April with our Service Provision group in a gathering hosted by Cybermoor Ltd in Alston. Cybermoor, who are near completion of their action research work, presented their preliminary findings to the group. This action research has examined the ways in which rural community members and public sector service providers can be encouraged to contribute content to community websites. It has also explored opportunities for public sector agencies to use community websites as a means of engagement and assessment of rural needs and to influence delivery. The final report will be published here in due course. The group were also given the opportunity to visit some of the other Alston Moor social enterprises delivering community led service provision including the Mines Heritage Centre and community shop in Nenthead. The final part of the gathering saw the group work in depth with the Carnegie Commission Petal model and the address the issue of policy influence and shared messages.

Kate Braithwaite is delighted to be part of a new group which will help shape a prosperous future for rural Scotland.

Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs Richard Lochhead chaired the inaugural meeting of the Rural Development Council in Dunkeld on the 2nd of June.

The council includes a number of individuals who will bring a broad range of expertise on rural matters to the table with the aim of developing policy and advising the Scottish Government on how rural communities can contribute to Scotland's sustainable economic growth.

The Community Land Trust movement is making waves. At their conference in London at the end of April,  Iain Wright - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Communities and Local Government - confirmed that CLTs are now firmly on the government's agenda as a way to bring the affordable housing and community engagement agendas together. The event showcased work undertaken in partnership with Carnegie Rural Programme, including a DVD 'Then we will do it ourselves' which is now available from Jennifer Aird (J.Aird@salford.ac.uk). The buzz in the room was palpable - it is clear that Community Land Trusts may be at a tipping point, as the solid work of creating enabling institutional and policy frameworks continues. But there is no substitute for living, breathing examples of success and the seven case stories of rural CLTs that comprise the film (and how to guide, also launched during the day), offer just that. A full copy of the report and case studies is attached below.

WildWorks has been invited to create the special display at the centre of the current Collaborators: UK Design for Performance 2003 – 2007 exhibition at the Victoria & Albert (V&A) Museum London.

Carnegie partner and Cornish Film-maker, Will Coleman was delighted to be awarded the winner's 'torque' in the 'Entertainment' section with his co-partner, Robin Kewell, at the Celtic Media Festival in Galway, Ireland in April. The short film 'Tom and the Giant' is a tongue-in-cheek modern retelling of the ancient Cornish fairytale.

“It was great fun,” said Will Coleman, “I dressed up as a road worker and Robin filmed me telling stories to tourists trapped in a rainy traffic jam on the A30!”