RETHINKING THE CREATIVE RURAL ECONOMY IN THE POST-

AGRICULTURAL ERA

a rural community perspective

Dr. Ian Hunter

The Creative Rural Economy – From Theory to PracticeConference, Kingston, Ontario, June 15 2011

Public Farm 1 Exhibition, MoMA/PS1 New York 2008

The Creative Rural Economy initiative in England was developed as a response to a growing sense of crisis in the rural community:

Climate Change and Global Warming

The Global Economic Downturn

Implementation of EU CAP reforms

Animal pandemics and public health concerns

Demographic and political changes

Climate Change and Global Warming

English wine is certainly having quite a moment. As recently as 1984 just 325 hectares of land were producing grapes that were being made into wine but over the past few years there’s been a huge increase in planting.

“It’s not all in production yet but we’ve now got 75 per cent more land under vine than we had in 2004,” says Julia Trustram Eve of English Wine Producers. “The official figure stands at 1,323 though we estimate that the actual figure is even higher than that.”

Royal family to produce its own wine from Windsor Great Park grapes

Climate Change and Global Warming

Greenhouse Britain, Helen & Newton Harrison, 2009

The Global Economic Downturn

Theories of Social Change - unstable dynamics

Change as a fundamental feature of modern life - the notion of ‘repertoire’

Implementation of radical EU CAP reforms

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) represents 48% of the EU’s budget, 49.8 billion Euros in 2007.

CAP reform (Pillar 2) aims to reduce this contribution to 36% by 2013 by shifting subsidies from agricultural production to social and environmental priorities (RDPE).

BSE/vCJD (Mad Cow Disease)

The costs of BSE in Britain:£3.5 billion since 1996 168 people dead and 95 suspect.

FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE

Images of Tony Blair at the height of the foot-and-mouth crisis may have frightened off foreign tourists, says the government's media chief. Alastair Campbell is quoted in a think-tank's new report, which says much of the £2bn losses experienced by the British tourist industry during the crisis was due to a lack of communication with the public overseas.

AVIAN FLU (H5N1)

Incineration of H5N1 infected turkeys, 2002

US Congress voted $7.1 billion to combat avian flu. In 2006 donor nations pledged $2 billion to combat bird flu at the two day International Pledging Conference on Avian and Human Influenza held in China. Over ten billion dollars have been spent and over two hundred million birds have been killed to try to contain H5N1. Investment strategies are being altered to manage the effects of H5N1. This changes the valuations of trillions of dollars worth of stocks worldwide as investors move assets to avoid risk.

E-coli

E. coli fear grips Hamburg June 2nd 2011

The gate to the grounds of the organic farm where the outbreak began

The killer bug claimed at least 33 lives, has left some 3,000 people ill across 14 countries, and led to several bans on vegetables grown in Europe, which have cost farmers millions of euros (dollars) in losses. The compensation package finalised by the European Commission will cost more than €210m in June 2011.

Crisis also challenges us to re-think our values, priorities, and the way we do things

An opportunity to re-think the core principles of the Creative Rural Economy?

Creativity: professional, para-professional, and endogenous

Rural: land-based and agricultural communities

Economy: that’s anybody’s guess!

The Crisis in Agriculture is a Crisis in Culture

Proposing a cultural strategy for agricultural change

Establishment of a Rural Cultural Forum

The Creative Rural Communities Report

Re-defining Rural Creatives: unlocking the cultural capital of ‘other’ rural communities

Farmer Creatives

Women and the Rural Economy

Young People

Rural Elders

Artists and Professional Cultural Entrepreneurs

New Rural Cultural Diversities

Marginals and illegals

Tessa Bunney, Royal Agricultural Show, 2006

Acting on Government Advice:A Rural Mandate:Need for evidence of support from grass-roots rural and professional arts stakeholders (NFU, RASE, Soil Association, ACRE, etc.)

Policy FitFocusing the aims of the rural cultural strategy to address key Government policy agendas: environmental sustainability, public health, youth, social cohesion, The Big Society, etc.

Making the Economic Arguments:The proposal for a Creative Rural Economy initiative was recognised as the key to the success of the strategy

The Rural Community Response 2006 - 11

Establishment of The Rural Cultural Forum, 2006

Rural Cultural Summit, Tate Britain, 2006 (stakeholders’ conference)

The Creative Rural EconomyConference, Lancaster University, 2006

The Creative Rural Communities Report, July 2010

The Government’s Rural Advocate, Dr Stuart Burgess, with Tate Britain Director Stephen Deuchar, at the Rural Cultural Summit

Creative Rural Economy Conference - Final PanelMichael Hart, Farmer (Chair); Linda Burnham, Art in the Public Interest, USA; Janet Barton, Lancashire Economic Partnership; Sally Medlyn, Consultant; Dr Jan Hartholt, Dutch Ministry of Agriculture; Mark Robinson, Arts Council England; Iain Bennett, North West Development Association.

Mapping the Creative Rural Economy

Arts and rural cultural tourismDigital media and the rural economyPromoting creative rural clusters (chains)Arts-led urban rural and cultural diversity business partnershipsArt-farms, rural biennales, and rural arts festivalsNew rural design and architecture initiativesInvesting in rural community creativity and rural cultural capitalArts-based land use, and renewables (energy and fibre crops)Food cultures and rural food marketing initiativesNew rural crafts, and textile/fashion interfaces with agriculture.

Re-Thinking the Rural: The Post-Agricultural Landscape

The emergence of unanticipated rural social, economic, and environmental formations

Inventing a new rural aesthetic

Proposing a cultural strategy to manage agricultural change

Re-thinking the rural economy from a cultural perspective

CREATIVE RURAL ECONOMYRe-thinking the Rural Economy from a cultural perspective

Michael Eavis (farmer/Glastonbury) Murray Carter (biomass farmer) Robert Garlick (craftsman) Farm Barbecue (ArtBarns project)

£100 million for the local economy.. and still counting. Farmer creativity & cultural entrepreneurship.

Rural leaders and farmers are successfully innovating by adopted a culture of self-help and creative entrepreneurship, and are very eager to take on further engagement with the arts, media and cultural sectors in developing all aspects of rural regeneration, rural community development, farm diversification and the creative rural economy. But they are still not getting anywhere near the level of support and backing from the statutory arts and cultural funding and policy sectors that they feel they are entitled to. Commenting on the outcome of a recent public into community benefits from the Glastonbury Festival,

Farmer/cultural entrepreneur Michael Eavis stated:"The local economy gets £100 million a year .. they are all on board now because everybody earns some money from it [Glastonbury Festival] - and there are seven [other] farms I now rent”.

HAY FESTIVALS AROUND THE WORLD

CARTAGENA26—29 JAN 2012BEIRUTMAY 2012 BELFAST28 MAY—4 JUN 2011HAY26 MAY—5 JUN 2011XALAPA6—9 OCT 2011BRECON12—14 AUG 2011MERTHYR2—4 SEP 2011NAIROBI15—18 SEP 2011CAPE TOWN21—25 SEP 2011SEGOVIA22—25 SEP 2011MALDIVESNOV 2011KERALA18—20 NOV 2011

Over the past decade, Hay Festival has become a global not-for-profit institution

The changes in agriculture are radical, and are giving rise to new economic, environmental and social formations in rural areas, and changing the way in which farming and rural communities think about themselves and their role in the context of the national discourse.

There is a major shift away from farming and food production to rural development and social and environmental goods.

FARM PROJECT HELPS CHILDRENFarmers Guardian, August 10th 2007

YORKSHIRE children with learning and behavioural difficulties are set to benefit from a new education project being set up by a local land owner.

Gareth Gaunt is investing in three dedicated fishing ponds and a new classroom at his Sicklinghall Farm, near Wetherby. Working with schools throughout the Leeds area, he will take small groups of problematic children, at risk of being excluded from school, to help them gain an official ‘Fishing and the Environment’ qualification.

Gareth Gaunt (left) with fishing instructor Leon Shipley

Creative rural communitiesThe enhancement and unlocking of the creative and cultural capital of grassroots rural communities and businesses

Sally Robinson, farmer and rural entrepreneur, founder of Amplebosom.com www.amplebosom.com

Releasing rural creative potentialand cultural capital

Q. Why have rural communities and businesses not benefited more from the creative rural economy and related arts and cultural funding and resources?

(i) Culture = untapping new economic potential. Because they don’t have a coherent rural cultural strategy which clearly articulates and demonstrated their cultural needs and potentials;

(ii) Culture = jobs They don’t know who to talk to, nor do they have access to the policy language and key policy makers at DCMS, Arts Council, etc.;

(iii) Culture as an exclusively urban policy zone? Cultural industries, creative economy and cultural policy discourseis in general preoccupied with urban values and priorities.

Rural cultural strategy & creative rural economy initiativesIt’s all about sustainabilityA rural cultural strategy also means aligning the rural sector’s contributions more identifiably with key government objectives for economic, energy and environmental sustainability.

Achieving a credible rural policy fitAddressing some of the RDPE axes, and paying attention to regional rural development priorities as logical points of entry

Mapping rural cultural and economic diversity Understanding the complexity and cultural diversity our ‘rural’ constituencies; what about the fishing port communities?

Partnership v dependencyPromoting rural communities as positive, proactive and full of untapped cultural capital and creative potential

Brokering a place at the policy tableGetting the DCMS and DEFRA policy people on board

Political tractionPromoting a cross-party rural affairs lead on the creative rural economy

Four creative rural sectorsA brief sampling of a couple of rural sectors and communities which (from our research) would seem to constitute important, but as yet undocumented or unrecognised, new areas of creative economic output and potential

Rural creatives Professional artists, craftspeople, designers, architects, etc., resident and/or working in mainly rural locations

Farmer creativityFarmers who have pioneered uniquely cultural projectsand/or are consciously generating new cultural and social goods; i.e. social farming and the ‘art farms’ phenomena

Creative rural communitiesThe enhancement and unlocking of the creative and cultural capital of grassroots rural communities andbusinesses

New urban – rural creative economic interfacesNew cultural communities in the countryside; farmmarkets and cultural diversity; the Black Farmer

Rural creativesProfessional artists, craftspeople, designers, architects, resident and/or working in rural locations contribute around £250 million per annum to the national Creative Economy

‘Rural (traditional) crafts could soon overtake farming as the biggest contributor to the rural economy’‘The Crafts in the English Countryside’ Report, The Countryside Agency, 2004

BASKETS BY GYONGY LAKY

Made using orchard prunings -recycling waste materials for high value craft products

CONTEMPORARY RURAL CRAFTSand new craft and textile/fashion interfaces with agriculture

The Owl Project

New digital rural crafts

RURAL DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE

Rose Garden, Cumin Cow (Dreaming) House

Design for a Cowshed, Rural Studio Alabama

Egglu project: new rural design for urban people Design of agricultural equipment

RESEARCH AND AGRICULTURE

FOOD CULTURE AND ARTS-LEDMARKETING INITIATIVES

Poet James Crowden promoting West country cider

ARTS AND RURAL TOURISM:the ArtBarns project - promoting cultural tourism with marginal hill-farming

communities in Lancashire

Tribute to Kurt Schwitters by Simon Cuttsneon installations outside and inside farmer Norman Nutter’s barn at Fence, Forest of Bowland

Photo Tessa Bunney

ARTS-BASED LAND USE AND RENEWABLES

Stan Herd, US Land Artist

ART FARMS, RURAL BIENNALES AND FESTIVALS

ART FARMS

There are 17 documented ArtFarm projects currently active in the South West of England.

Farming fibre and alternative energy: new urban markets for rural craft skills and farm grown materials

Murray Carter, Yorkshire pioneer of willow energy crops Willow bio-mass growing trials, at Long Ashton

Promoting new markets for surplus biomass willow: Concorde commission, Manchester International Airport, 2007

The Bio-Regional Group: experiments with hemp growing for fashion textiles

DIGITAL MEDIA AND THE RURAL ECONOMY

Interviewing Henry Bainbridge and local farmers on Chipping FM, GRASS ROOTS 2001

ArtBarns project: Toro Adeniran-Kane with Sarah Hartley and Ben at Masons House Farm, Bashall Eaves, discussing a joint farm produce marketing initiative

Arts-led farm foods marketing and new urban rural cultural diversity business partnerships

Farmer John Hartley entertaining African women from Manchester - ArtBarns 2000 - a project which led to a direct selling scheme for his milk

Spitalfields Community Farm - Coriander Club. Lutfun Hussain. Photo Alex Moore, 2004

THE BLACK FARMER

Creative Rural Marginals and Illegals

Contribution of Travellers, Gypsies and Roma communities to the rural economy

Migrant rural workers and transportation of refugees across national rural borders

Urban/rural Youth culture, Nu-raves, and extreme sports/arts

Smokies and illegal meat exports for ethnic minority communities

Rural elders, rural Grey Bars: rural wisdom and the Knowledge economy

Rural Drug industry, and moonshine

Cat houses and sex ranching

Contribution of Travellers, Gypsies and Roma communities to the rural economy

The Appleby Horse Fair and Traveller convention in northern England contributes an estimated £1.4 million annually to the local economy.

Right: The Rural Media Company, Hereford, publishes a monthly periodical for Gypsies and Travellers

Migrant rural workers and transportation of refugees across national rural borders

Below: Project with migrant workers by Bridging Arts, England

FSA rural documentary project, 1930s

Mass gatherings draft bylaw prompted by rural ravesby Nelson Daily editor on 24 November 2010

A surge of Nu-raves in the Kaslo area and Taghum Beach (BC) in the last year has prompted complaints and now the drafting of a regional district bylaw to regulate mass gatherings.

Smokies and illegal meat exports for ethnic minority communities

'Smokie' gangs threaten meat tradeThe illegal meat trade could have serious long-term implications for Welsh farming, a conference in Cardiff has been told.

Mafia-like criminal gangs are making huge profits from the illegal meat trade with little risk of being caught and punished. Wales is becoming the centre for the illegal production of so-called smokies - a delicacy made from carcasses which are primitively blow-torched.

Elders: natural wisdom and the rural Knowledge economy

Left: The world’s first Grey Bar? Right: Sheep Judging at an English agricultural show

Rural Drug industry, and moonshine

DEA Assessment: Methamphetamine is the principal drug of concern in all parts of Iowa. Despite some abatement through State regulations placed on precursor chemicals, rurally based local small toxic laboratories continue to be a significant problem throughout the state.

A traditional rural still

The Shady Lady Ranch brothel in Nye County, Nevada, about 150 miles north of Las Vegas

Some small brothels, with just a few girls, pay a quarterly fee of $5,000 (£3,100). Bigger houses can pay up to $37,000 (£23,000) per quarter. One Nevada county takes in several hundred thousand dollars a year. The money is used for services ranging from ambulances to veterans’ assistance. McMurdo has found that in the “heart of gold” tradition, brothels are big on being silent partners for community projects.

THE HEART OF GOLD RURAL ECONOMY

MoCCA? Museum of Contemporary Countryside Art

Changing the language and focus of the the creative rural economic debate

Creative = FERTILITY (the key to survival is safeguarding biodiversity and human fertility)

Rural = SUSTAINABILITY (farming the sun - farmers produce our protein, energy, fibres, and culture)

Economy = OIKOS (oikophobia - rejection of home values alienation - social responsibility)

CAP Pillar III? A (rural) cultural strategy for agricultural change

Reframing EU agriculture and rural development policy become a cultural discourse and social responsibility

Agriculture sits at the heart of culture (urban/rural)

Agriculture as the first culture

The rural is no longer marginal: it's now moving to the centre of economic and environmental policy discourses

CHANGING THE POLARITY OF THE DISCOURSE

Making the economic (OIKOS) arguments

£14bn estimated costs to the British Economy (1996 - 2011) of pandemics/health scares: BSE, FMD, H5N1, E-coli. Approximately £.75 bn. p.a.

By reframing agricultural policy as a cultural undertaking and responsibilityi.e. factoring in other ethical, social, aesthetic, environmental valueswe could possibly save the economy £2.5 bn over the next five years,or £750 million p.a.

Reduce animal welfare, environmental, public health, and other social costs

CALCULATING THE COSTS OF THE WRONG AGRICULTURE POLICY

Recalibrating the the rural sector's (cultural and creative) p.a. contribition to the national creative economy

1.Estimated reduction (at 20%) in the costs relative to public health, animal welfare, compensation, etc. £150 million

2.Farmer Creatives, rural marginals, illegals, and the cultural capital of creative rural communities. £250 million

3.Rural creatives, artists, architects, designers, crafts, etc.£350 million Total contribution pa. £750 million

This has been achieved without any Government arts or culture led regeneration funding

By way of contrast the cities and urban economy have received over £200 bn in DCMS/ACE arts and Lottery Arts funding in the last five years

In the same period the Rural Culture Forum has only been able to secure £100,000 of arts funding for rural regeneration.

RETHINKING THE CREATIVE RURAL ECONOMYa post-agricultural perspective

Presentation by Dr. Ian Hunter

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