Friday 4th December saw the Sustainable and Resilient Rural Communities Conference at Stoodleigh Court near Tivertontake place with huge success. The Conference was organised by the Devon Towns Forum and Devon Rural Network with the support of the Carnegie UK, and played host to 80 delegates.
DRN Chair, Phil Wagstaff started the proceedings with an excellent overview of the work and development of the Devon Rural Network and also brought the newly created Rural Proofing Self Assessment to the attention of delegates, with further promotion the focus of one of the afternoon workshop sessions. For more information on the self assessment, please see the “action groups” section of this newsletter.
There were a number of following presentations, including Dr Kate Braitewaite of Carnegie discussing the importance of community involvement which highlighted a number of exemplars around the UK, and with special mention made of the Devon Heartlands Community Engagement Forum; Ciaran Lynch of the Tipperary Institute gave an overview of integrated area planning, Trevor Cherrett of the Commission for Rural Communnities, who introduced the Rural Coalition manifesto; Drs Tony Kendle and Juliet Rose speaking on the experience of community engagement with Eden Claylands Project; and Gill Westcott of Transition Exeter talking about the development of Transition Towns.
After an excellent local lunch, further presentations were given by Karen Bridgford and Bob Paterson of the Devon Reinvestment Service, who introduced their recently launched Community Assets Toolkit, and were neatly followed by Ally Rood of the Commission for Rural Communities, who gave an insight into the Sustainable Communities Toolkit.
These were followed by workshops sessions based around rural proofing, community assets toolkit, sustainable communities toolkit and integrated area planning, which saw enthusiastic participation by delegates and a number of issues to be taken forward were identified.
The morning and afternoon sessions were summed up by Cllr. Andrew Leadbetter and Cllr. Paul Diviani respectively, who both showed a great deal of enthusiasm for the topics discussed on the day and with a great deal of interest in taking some of the issues raised forward.
The event highlighted the benefits of partnership working, and showed that a great deal can be achieved through effective collaborations.
*A copy of the conference report and copies of the presentations can be downloaded by clicking on the links below*
CONFERENCE REPORT - Sustainable & Resilient Rural Communities Conference 2009 (PDF, 1.13MB)
Conference Programme (PDF, 21.7KB)
Speaker Biographies (PDF, 146KB)
Presentations
Devon Rural Network, Rev. Philip Wagstaff (PDF, 178KB)
Carnegie UK Trust, Dr. Kate Braithwaite (PDF, 631KB)
Integrated Area Planning, Ciaran Lynch (PDF, 385KB)
Transition Towns, Gill Westcott (PDF, 1.32MB)
Community Assets Development DRS Toolkit, Karen Bridgford & Bob Paterson (PDF, 232KB)
Sustainable Rural Communities Toolkit, Ally Rood (PDF, 640KB)
Community Assets Toolkit Workshop (PDF, 119KB)