1. RETHINKING THE CREATIVE RURAL
ECONOMY IN THE POST-
AGRICULTURAL ERA
a rural community perspective
Dr. Ian Hunter
The Creative Rural Economy – From Theory to Practice
Conference, Kingston, Ontario, June 15 2011

3. Public Farm 1 Exhibition, MoMA/PS1 New York 2008

4. 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

5. Climate Change and Global Warming
Royal family to produce its own wine from Windsor Great Park grapes
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.”

6. Climate Change and Global Warming
Greenhouse Britain, Helen & Newton Harrison, 2009

7. The Global Economic Downturn
Theories of Social Change - unstable dynamics
Change as a fundamental feature of modern life - the notion of ‘repertoire’

8. 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).

9. BSE/vCJD (Mad Cow Disease)
The costs of BSE in Britain:
£3.5 billion since 1996
168 people dead and 95 suspect.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. E-coli
E. coli fear grips Hamburg The gate to the grounds of the organic
June 2nd 2011 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.

13. 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!

14. 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

15. 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

16. Tessa Bunney, Royal Agricultural Show, 2006

17. 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 Fit
Focusing 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

18. The Rural Community Response 2006 - 11
Establishment of The Rural Cultural
Forum, 2006
Rural Cultural Summit, Tate Britain,
2006 (stakeholders’ conference)
The Creative Rural Economy
Conference, 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

21. Creative Rural Economy Conference - Final Panel
Michael 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.

22. Mapping the Creative Rural Economy
Arts and rural cultural tourism
Digital media and the rural economy
Promoting creative rural clusters (chains)
Arts-led urban rural and cultural diversity business partnerships
Art-farms, rural biennales, and rural arts festivals
New rural design and architecture initiatives
Investing in rural community creativity and rural cultural capital
Arts-based land use, and renewables (energy and fibre crops)
Food cultures and rural food marketing initiatives
New rural crafts, and textile/fashion interfaces with agriculture.

23. 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

24. CREATIVE RURAL ECONOMY
Re-thinking the Rural Economy from a cultural perspective
Michael Eavis (farmer/Glastonbury) Murray Carter (biomass farmer) Robert Garlick (craftsman) Farm Barbecue (ArtBarns project)

25. £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”.

26. HAY FESTIVALS AROUND THE WORLD
CARTAGENA26—29 JAN 2012BEIRUTMAY 2012 BELFAST28 MAY—4 JUN 2011
HAY26 MAY—5 JUN 2011
XALAPA6—9 OCT 2011
BRECON12—14 AUG 2011
MERTHYR2—4 SEP 2011
NAIROBI15—18 SEP 2011
CAPE TOWN21—25 SEP 2011
SEGOVIA22—25 SEP 2011
MALDIVESNOV 2011
KERALA18—20 NOV 2011
Over the past decade, Hay Festival has become a global not-for-profit institution

27. 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.
Gareth Gaunt (left) with fishing instructor Leon Shipley
There is a major shift away from FARM PROJECT HELPS CHILDREN
Farmers Guardian, August 10th 2007
farming and food production to
YORKSHIRE children with learning and
rural development and social and behavioural difficulties are set to benefit from
environmental goods. 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.

28. Creative rural communities
The 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

29. Releasing rural creative potential
and 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 discourse
is in general preoccupied with urban values and priorities.

30. Rural cultural strategy & creative rural
economy initiatives
It’s all about sustainability
A 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 fit
Addressing 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 dependency
Promoting rural communities as positive, proactive and full of untapped
cultural capital and creative potential
Brokering a place at the policy table
Getting the DCMS and DEFRA policy people on board
Political traction
Promoting a cross-party rural affairs lead on the creative rural economy

31. Four creative rural sectors
A 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 creativity
Farmers who have pioneered uniquely cultural projects
and/or are consciously generating new cultural and social goods; i.e. social
farming and the ‘art farms’ phenomena
Creative rural communities
The enhancement and unlocking of the creative and cultural capital of
grassroots rural communities and
businesses
New urban – rural creative economic interfaces
New cultural communities in the countryside; farm
markets and cultural diversity; the Black Farmer

32. Rural creatives
Professional 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

33. BASKETS BY GYONGY LAKY
Made using orchard prunings -
recycling waste materials for high
value craft products

34. CONTEMPORARY RURAL CRAFTS
and new craft and textile/fashion interfaces with agriculture

35. The Owl Project
New digital rural
crafts

36. RURAL DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE

37. Rose Garden, Cumin Cow (Dreaming) House
Design for a Cowshed, Rural Studio Alabama

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

40. RESEARCH AND AGRICULTURE

41. FOOD CULTURE AND ARTS-LED
MARKETING INITIATIVES
Poet James Crowden promoting West country cider

42. ARTS AND RURAL TOURISM:
the ArtBarns project - promoting cultural tourism with marginal hill-farming
communities in Lancashire
Tribute to Kurt Schwitters by Simon Cutts
neon installations outside and inside farmer Norman Nutter’s barn at Fence, Forest of Bowland

43. Photo Tessa Bunney

44. ARTS-BASED LAND USE AND RENEWABLES

45. Stan Herd, US Land Artist

46. ART FARMS, RURAL BIENNALES AND FESTIVALS

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

48. 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

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

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

51. DIGITAL MEDIA AND THE RURAL ECONOMY
Interviewing Henry Bainbridge and local farmers on Chipping FM, GRASS ROOTS 2001

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

53. 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

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

56. THE BLACK FARMER

57. 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

58. 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

59. Migrant rural workers and transportation of refugees across national rural borders
FSA rural documentary project, 1930s
Below: Project with migrant workers by
Bridging Arts, England

60. Mass gatherings draft bylaw prompted by rural raves
by 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.

61. Smokies and illegal meat exports for ethnic minority communities
'Smokie' gangs threaten meat trade
The 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.

62. Elders: natural wisdom and the rural Knowledge economy
Left: The world’s first Grey Bar? Right: Sheep Judging at an English agricultural
show

63. Rural Drug industry, and moonshine
A traditional rural still
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.

64. THE HEART OF GOLD RURAL ECONOMY
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.

65. MoCCA? Museum of Contemporary Countryside Art

66. CHANGING THE POLARITY OF THE DISCOURSE
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

67. CALCULATING THE COSTS OF THE WRONG AGRICULTURE POLICY
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 responsibility
i.e. factoring in other ethical, social, aesthetic, environmental values
we 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

68. RETHINKING THE CREATIVE RURAL ECONOMY
a post-agricultural perspective
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.

69. Presentation by Dr. Ian Hunter

70. REGISTERED CHARITABLE TRUST NO. 1002365
LITTORAL Arts is a non-profit making charitable trust set up in
1990 to promote innovative arts projects in response to social,
environmental and cultural change.
The Arts & Rural Creativity programme is supported by the Arts
Council of England.
42, Lodge Mill Lane, Turn Village, Bury, Lancashire BL0 0RW
Tel/Fax: ++44 (0)1706 827 961
E-mail: littoral@btopenworld.com
Websites: www.littoral.org.uk www.merzbarn.net www.ruralculture.org.uk