Given current trends, the death of the rural is inevitable, a debate staged by the College of Social Science at the University of Lincoln.
A summary is available to download here, Rurality Debate
In addition, I can report that the audience of 35 voted 10 in favour of the motion and 21 against – good news for those of us working in rural research!
Also, from the initial trial run of the experiment, which I plan to take to a number of different audiences in the coming year, we found that rural is still strongly associated with images of agriculture. By contrast, preferences for where people would like to live were very much oriented towards images with more evidence of social activity. Interestingly, given the current issues around HS2, the image of the viaduct was considered by 3 people to be “most natural” and by 2 people to merit protection, By contrast, no-one perceived wind-energy production to be “natural”.
Moving forwards, it is clear that there are many issues that have a direct impact upon people’s lives and the way that we as researchers or policy-makers frame the meaning of rural will affect the ways in which we attempt to address them. Therefore, we would like to invite a wider range of rural people and stakeholders from across Lincolnshire to attend a follow up event early in the new year where the floor is very much opened to them to tell us what they consider to be the most pressing issues. Hopefully, this will provide us with the opportunity to carry out some new research and build stronger relationships with a range of people across the County. We would like people to view the University as a resource for the region and to tap into our research, our students’ expertise, our wider networks and our access to external funding sources that can support rural communities.
If you are interested, please make a note for 12th February when we will arrange an early evening meeting – further details and venue etc to be confirmed.
One Reply to “Summary of the big debate”