Carnegie UK Trust’s four-year Rural Action Research Programme (RARP) came into being in April 2005. The Big Lottery Fund provided an opportunity to delegate responsibility for this programme to Carnegie UK Trust through an ‘award partner’ model. Jointly the funding has been £2.2M from Big Lottery Fund and £750,000 from Carnegie.
The programme was designed to demonstrate cost effective, community-led solutions to the challenges facing rural areas. It aims to deliver long-term sustainable change and Carnegie UK Trust will use the experience from the programme to influence policymaking.
The process got underway in September 2004 with a consultation with rural activists about the most pressing issues. Not surprisingly the consensus opinion at that time identified six areas; community led service delivery, community engagement in planning, skills for rural communities, sustainable management of community assets, building inclusive communities and addressing the needs of very remote areas.
The next step involved recruiting consultants who would act as advisors (see details below.) The six themes were then advertised and Carnegie welcomed expressions of interest - and deliberately spent time explaining at length that this was not just another grant scheme - but rather an opportunity to stand back and reflect on critical success factors. In total, 44 Rural Action Research Progamme partners were recruited from across the UK and Ireland (details of these partners and their work can be viewed using the links on the right.)
This programme has now come to an end. Some risks were taken - the 'usual suspects' were not recruited- and for the most part the partners exceeded all expectations - delivering the most insightful findings that Carnegie is committed to spreading the word about widely.
This has been done through the publication 'A Manifesto for Rural Communities- Inspiriing Community Innovation' which was launched in October 2009. This captures the rich source of evidence in real places from the RARP. In this booklet Carnegie sets out some very positive opportunities for rural communities (and indeed communities everywhere) to survive and thrive during what are proving to be turbulent times.
Sitting behind this report is a series of briefing papers which summarise the headline findings of the work. These can be viewed in the publications library. These are also supported by the forty-four detailed final reports from the partners which can be accessed through their web-pages on the right.
Carnegie also intends to develop these action research findings through the Fieryspirits Community of Practice.
