Realising change: working with communities to inform a resilient recovery process in remote, rural and island communities

Challenges

The rural economy is undergoing rapid changes, with profound impacts on communities and organisations. These include the ongoing implications of the Covid-19 pandemic, EU Exit and new trade deals, and the demands of achieving ‘net zero’. Demographic changes, evolving work practices and ways of delivering services, and emerging lifestyle preferences are shifting the links between rural areas and cities. However, the benefits of economic development have not been distributed evenly across Scotland, and there is a consensus on the need to address regional inequality and ensure a just transition. Some sparsely populated areas have lost population, and the socio-economic costs of ‘places left behind’ are large. Past regional and rural development schemes appear to have had a mixed record of success.

Rural and island communities have experienced long-standing issues relating to population and demographic change, sustainable rural development, public service delivery, equalities and socioeconomic opportunities. The key policy drivers include: rural depopulation, employment, education and skills, housing and infrastructure, community empowerment and ensuring that island and rural priorities are accounted for throughout government’s policy and legislation.

Questions

Solutions

This project aims to understand how change in remote, rural and island (RR&I) communities can be assessed, responded to, and facilitated. We look to identify what positive change could look like in RR&I communities, whilst simultaneously promoting empowerment through (enhanced) multi-level governance.

Qualitative longitudinal community and stakeholder integration 

We are employing creative qualitative methods (including digital/life stories) in case studies, specifically “Living Labs”, to understand concerns around RR&I threats and how positive change can be facilitated. The term “Living Labs” relates to the participatory and action-based nature of the research engagement with case studies, which emphasises facilitating change while providing real-world examples of how that change is experienced.

This approach aims to generate deep insights for policymakers by facilitating direct and ongoing participation with the selected communities over the lifespan of the project. Sectoral, regional and national stakeholders who participate in the Scottish Government’s Rural Economy and Communities Stakeholder Group (SG REC- SG) are advising on effective community response strategies, including learning from other places, with the Living Labs acting as a policy testbed. This process is enhancing our understanding of effective decision-making and reflecting on the role of the Scottish Rural Parliament as well as understanding processes of further enabling a rural movement.

Quantitative secondary data analysis, revision, and integration

This activity involves revisiting national data sets as well as considering new sources. These include novel spatial indicators and datasets, such as the location of place-based assets, which are essential enabling factors for supporting community development, and the changes in these over time. Additional spatial indicators could include traditional measures of positive community outcomes, more advanced multivariate indicators of community ‘strength’ and novel indicators which capture elements of community inclusion and multi-dimensional well-being. It will thus go beyond other measures such as the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, which is often criticised for neglecting rural aspects.

We build on and develop these datasets to grasp the diversity of RR&I areas beyond population density and facilitate the tailoring of interventions. By applying up-to-date statistical and econometric techniques, we assess and understand change in RR&I communities, macro-level relationships between access to assets (or lack thereof) and socio-demographic phenomena, and how local conditions affect nearby areas (negatively or positively), taking a longitudinal approach when data permit. This activity considers change and recovery across all Scottish RR&I communities by revising and integrating existing quantitative datasets. New measures and indicators, based on needs and preferences are seeking to understand which factors support RR&I recovery, including supporting population growth, reducing inequalities, representing minorities, and responding to unprecedented challenges in communities.

An agent-based model (ABM) to develop rural community scenarios

This activity develops an ABM to simulate future trends in Scottish RR&I communities and economies. ABM is a form of computer simulation that can explicitly represent different people, businesses, organisations and places, the interactions between them and how they change over time. It can be used to visualize complex relationships and to test plans and ideas in a safe environment. Using an ABM provides a novel mechanism for modelling change that will enable RR&I communities to explore future scenarios with stakeholders, including which place-based policies will deliver better outcomes. The model is initially being developed at the regional level with the longer-term intention of upscaling to the whole of rural and island Scotland to draw more general conclusions on key dynamics or specific sectors.