Developing sustainable management of community assets
The Theme
The Carnegie Commission for Rural Community Development recognised that the old deficit models of rural development have failed: That forcing rural communities to denigrate their area in order to win essential funding is perverse. Carnegie believes that there is an alternative approach that builds upon the things that a community has - an asset based approach to rural community development. We do not, of course, deny that there is an urgent need for public investment in some rural areas - just that rural communities are well placed to understand how that resource or expertise can be allied with local assets to build economic and social success. Here we interpret assets to mean both the tangible (e.g. land, buildings) but the intangible (e.g. culture, history and people skills).
We asked International Association for Community Development to review asset based community development approaches in other parts of the world (where they are commonly used) and Forum for the Future to examine their use within the UK and Ireland. These reports can be found in the publications area of this site. We are encouraged by the response to this research - rural communities seem to find that there is much common sense in the asset approach. On these pages you will read about interesting case studies and further research programmes to inform our understanding of asset-based rural community development.
Kate Braithwaite has written a briefing which delves further into our understanding of asset-based approaches and links in the work of our Rural Action Research Programme partners.
Geoff Brown has taken a closer look into the issue of Land and Communities in his briefing. In this he looks into examples of 'community access and ownership of natural resources' in which were included land, forest, water (rivers, lochs, foreshore) and fixed assets (buildings etc.) This briefing looks into this issue and the future focussing on the findings from the Communities on the Edge project in the South of Scotland and the Hill Farming Communities project in the North of England.