2008 sees the last in a series of networking events for our Big Lottery co-funded 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.
The Community Planning group gathering took us down to Exeter where we were hosted by Devon Heartlands. The work of this group is very near completion with most of the partners concluding their action research at the end of this year. Clear messages are starting to emerge including the need for greater publicity and clarity on local community planning processes and the establishment of effective protocols for bridging between community-led plans and local `top-down strategies amongst others. Time was also given to work on a joint response to the forthcoming White Paper in England on Community Empowerment.
Our final RARP gathering saw the Sustainable Assets group back at the Falkland Centre for Stewardship. This group is taking forward one of the major messages of the Commission’s final report – that of Asset-Based Rural Community Development, where communities look at what they have to secure what they have not. The Centre for Stewardship used this gathering to illustrate practically the assets they have on the estate and their idea of stewardship. The group wa
s treating to a very privileged insight into the people and the landscape of Falkland meeting poets, carpenters, organic food producers and artists on the way. With the centre’s emphasis on the importance of local food and the increasingly popular Fife Diet - the catering was all Fife based produce provided by the Pillars of Hercules and local chef, Christopher Trotter. The group also took this opportunity to look more in depth into asset-based ways of working and the financial and practical methodologies on which to build on. This work will also be one of the main focuses of the new Community of Practice facilitated by Nick Wilding.
