In the latest CRE blog senior lecturer Menelaos Gkartzios reflects on his visit to the Venice Art Biennale.

From ‘SaF05’, Charlotte Prodger, Scotland + Venice partnership

The vaporetto from the airport to Venice was noticeably slow, and I swear the quality of water had been improved drastically. I decided that ‘slow transport’ was part of a strategy that sought minimum interruption in a city that was sinking – literally and metaphorically. In the middle of August, of all times, I had come to attend the Venice Art Biennale – for the first time. Artistic practice represents a new avenue of research for me, following the research network in Japan on art and rural development, the CRE Artist-in-Residence programme and the newly advertised rural Artist Residencies at Visual Arts in Rural Communities, as well as the upcoming Special Section in Sociologia Ruralis on ‘Doing Art in the Country’.

I wasn’t necessarily looking for the function or the meaning of the artworks, and the director’s introduction reassured me that there was no need to. I saw the artworks as a critique, an exploration of a particular topic, a research approach, and sometimes as nothing to ponder on. I arrived wondering where and how ‘the rural’ is positioned at the festival, obviously not as a space for exhibiting works of art, but as a field of knowledge that artists are engaging with: what questions of rurality (if any) are explored through contemporary visual arts? I approached the festival as if I was walking around a park. In fact, part of the festival takes place at the Venice Giardini, The Gardens. Years ago, a Dublin-based artist had advised me against seeing everything in an art exhibition. ‘Imagine you are in a park’. Some flowers, he continued, might take your fancy; you might even get closer to smell some, while others you will ignore. Handy advice I thought to myself when you are dealing with so much work: two art presentations offered as ‘propositions’ (one in the Giardini and one at the Arsenale), national pavilions and a series of other parallel exhibitions throughout the city. So I strolled at the park. Slowly and many times.

I came of course with my own rural preoccupations. Rurality had found its way to the festival, although not necessarily in explicit terms. Drawing here on the national representation entries (i.e. the pavilions) for example, there were questions of rurality in Charlotte Prodger’s intimate confessions about her queer identity growing up in ‘the village’ in rural Scotland. There were representations of rurality in the numerous landscapes that were used to depict Ghana’s natural resources and people in the moving (moving) images of John Akomfrah. Or in the video footage of tsunami rocks (presented as ‘cosmo-eggs’) washed out from the ocean and the multiple meanings these have for coastal communities much damaged in the 2011 earthquake in Japan – an entry that was fascinating to me because of its interdisciplinary work across ethnography, art, music and architecture. There were artworks about indigenous rural communities, for example the Inuit people and the forced relocation they were subjected to at the Canadian pavilion by artist collective Isuma. And there were more.

From ‘Cosmo-eggs’, Motoyuki Shitamichi, Japanese pavilion

Of course, to see the art festival solely through the rural lens is to reduce it. The trend of engaging critically with ‘the rural’ was there, although this could be easily missed were you not looking for it. Following the curator’s introduction, social critiques were abundant at the festival, and these seemed in line with ongoing discussions in social sciences about decolonising the academy and the art world, racial struggles and white hegemony, transgender rights, climate change, migration, poverty and the growth of ultra-right politics. Some artworks were extremely powerful in addressing these in a profound way, and if you ever have a chance to watch Arthur Jafa’s acclaimed video ‘The White Album’ please do, as anything I might try to write here about it seems too little.

As in any festival, it was the social element that makes it. The ‘art crowd’ as it is derogatively called sometimes, was friendly and engaging, and I met many people attending the festival, including fellow social scientists from across the world. ‘The rural?’ some would ask in puzzlement. Despite the posters everywhere in the city about the Biennale, many tourists didn’t know about it. It doesn’t matter, Venice is a sort of an art festival on its own, I thought. Still, the festival and its venues took me to places I wouldn’t normally go, and there were enough scattered exhibitions around the city to give you an adventure. Enough to see Venice in a different way, with washing lines hanging outdoors, kids playing on the backstreets and empty traditional cafes. All slow, walking in the city – all slow as the rural is sometimes, mistakenly, typified to be.

Changing Trade Regimes and the Future of Agriculture and Rural Communities – Session at the 2019 European Society for Rural Sociology Congress, Trondheim, Norway

This week we are delighted to have a guest post from Jane Atterton, Policy Researcher at the SRUC’s Rural Policy Centre. She reflects on her participation in a session organised by the CRE’s Carmen Hubbard and Adrienne Attorp at the recent 2019 European Society for Rural Sociology Congress (ESRS) in Trondheim, Norway.

Vegetable farm outside of Trondheim

Working group 27 at the ESRS 2019 Congress, titled ‘Changing Trade Regimes: Opportunities and Challenges for Agriculture and Rural Communities’, featured five speakers each focusing on different challenges and opportunities currently facing agriculture and rural communities across Europe – a fascinating session which covered an incredible breadth of topics.

Dr Carmen Hubbard opened the session by presenting the key findings of her recent ESRC-funded project on Brexit and how UK agriculture and its different sectors may survive or thrive.

Dr Hannah Chiswell from the Countryside and Community Research Institute then provided further reflections on the future of UK agriculture, including the need to strengthen the farmer voice in current Brexit debates.

SRUC’s Dr Jane Atterton then discussed some of the key issues facing Scotland’s agricultural sector and its rural communities, set in the context of current policy drivers in Scotland, including community empowerment, land reform and inclusive growth.

Dr Paul Swagemakers from the University of Galicia in Spain provided some comparative reflections on the changing nature of the dairy sector in Galicia and the Netherlands.

Finally, Professor Scott Prudham from the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto provided a historical account of the evolution of, and current challenges facing, the Languedoc wine sector.

Speakers and participants then engaged in a lively discussion covering issues ranging from the role of cooperatives in wine production, environmental degradation, the importance of understanding the reasons for a range of different behaviours such as xenophobia and voting patterns, the future of the LEADER approach in the UK post-Brexit, and the importance of taking a historical perspective to understand current situations.

The session demonstrated the breadth of perspectives that can be taken to explore Brexit, from quantitative, economic approaches reviewing potentially different spatial and sectoral impacts, to more qualitative, social considerations exploring the behaviour changes of farmers and rural residents. The session also revealed that, although Brexit is often viewed as a unique situation, farmers and wider rural businesses and communities across Europe are dealing with the implications of policy changes and there may be learning that can be shared.

This blog was originally posted on SRUC’s Rural Brexit Hub. Thank you to Jane Atterton and SRUC for permission to post it here.

What do arts practices bring to rural sociology? Reflections from ESRS Congress, Trondheim

The CRE’s Dr Fran Rowe reflects on discussions held during a panel she convened with Dr Menelaos Gkartzios at the recent European Society for Rural Sociology Congress in Trondheim, Norway.

Encounters with artists and their contemporary arts practices proved a rich seam of enquiry and discussion at the recent Congress of the European Society for Rural Sociology in Trondheim, Norway. Hard on the heels of their recent rural arts research visit to Japan, Dr Menelaos Gkartzios and Dr Frances Rowe of the Centre for Rural Economy convened a working group at the Congress to explore contemporary arts practices and rural development. After an introductory presentation by Fran an invited panel, comprising Professor Mike Woods of Aberystwyth University, Professor Esther Peeren from University of Amsterdam, Natalie Leung from University of Austria and Professor Mike Bell from University of Wisconsin, offered contrasting interdisciplinary perspectives which led to a fascinating discussion.

First off, Mike Woods reminded us that artists and rural sociologists share an inquisitiveness about the rural, an interest in differing rural narratives and an orientation toward working with communities to enact change. He argued that rural sociologists and artists could be seen to embrace an action research practice. This is exemplified by the artists’ residency programme run by the Centre for Rural Economy, in collaboration with Berwick Visual Arts in Northumberland, North East England and Newcastle University’s Institute for Creative Arts Practice. Work by artist Sander Van Raemdonck, for example, has used a walking arts practice to engage communities and planning professionals in issues of housing development in the Spittal peninsular in Berwick (as discussed in a recent paper here).

The use of space outside the art museum or gallery, with artists engaging communities through their creative practices can provide fertile ground to challenge assumptions about the rural and raise fresh questions. Mike drew on his recent experience of working with The Whitechapel Gallery’s Rural initiative and artists’ collective Myvillages, to emphasise that artists bring a creative palimpsest of methods for interrogating issues as broad as ageing in rural communities exploring the expressive, or more than human dimensions of rurality.

Esther Pereen’s research exploring the cultural imaginations of the rural across five continents brings a fresh lens on contemporary rurality and how it is represented in popular culture. Frequently the well-worn stereotypes of an idyllic and unchanging rurality persist and can prove remarkably obdurate. This tendency can persist in how artists, via commissions and residences, are expected to ‘give rural communities what they want’, rather than giving space to aesthetic responses to rural issues and places that are emergent and uncertain, and sometimes challenging to rural communities, as Frances Rowe found in her PhD research into three contemporary arts organisations in England and Scotland.

Natalie Leung’s research exploring farmers’ reactions to specific artworks in a mountainous rural region experiencing an ageing population and widespread land abandonment, is discovering how farmers ‘use’ encounters with artworks via the Echigo Tsumari Art Field help them to make sense of their own identities through experiences of working the land. For example, for some farmers art has helped them to express an open-minded acceptance of change and that nature inevitably takes over when people leave, whereas for others, art inspires them to continue farming, reaffirming the values of their relationships to the land and contributing to rural resilience.

Finally, Mike Bell shared some music played by his group Graminy (listen to an example here!). Combining artistry with rural sociology, Mike’s compositions have emerged from a collaboration with arts organisation The Worm Farm Institute that explores the role of fermentation in food, helps to surface in a different way issues of global importance such as climate change, and engages people in conversations about them in non-confrontational ways. This approach may go some way towards circumnavigating the contested binaries of climate acceptance and denial that are so prevalent in the US today (and manifesting themselves elsewhere.)

The discussion following the presentations extended the contours of the conversation, for example to hear about how theatre has helped to surface issues of neighbourhood planning and power relations in communities in North East England, to the limitations and realities of community engagement in high profile art festivals in Japan, to the challenges and opportunities of using creative practices as sources of data in academic journals. It is hoped that collaboration in this growing space of rural socio-cultural enquiry will continue to develop, with exciting possibilities for future research and knowledge exchange.

In our latest blog, Professor Jeremy Phillipson and  Roger Turner (CRE Associate and Rural Economics Consultant), discuss how the UK Industrial Strategy can embrace rural economies.

Would it be sensible to have an Industrial Strategy that overlooks an economic contribution equivalent to the 10 leading cities after London? The answer is clearly no, but this would be the risk if rural areas were not fully incorporated into the development and delivery of the Industrial Strategy. England’s rural areas host over half a million registered businesses and many more unregistered ones,  employ 3.5 million people, and in 2017 generated a GVA (gross value added) of at least £246 billion. They are integral to regional economies, make a substantial contribution to the vitality of their urban neighbours, and sustain communities of over 9.5 million people.

Thankfully, Industrial Strategy policy makers and rural stakeholders have been working hard to ensure that the strategy embraces our rural economies and places. Most recently this was boosted by a major workshop on the rural contribution to the Industrial Strategy, hosted by Rural Enterprise UK at Newcastle University in March.

As we move into the next pivotal stage of delivery, more than ever the contributions of rural areas to supporting growth and productivity need to be universally supported and embraced across Industrial Strategy processes and measures. Our team’s analysis of the Government’s own small business data is challenging assumptions that rural economies lack dynamism, perform less well, or are simply dependent on urban growth. Rural economies have untapped potential – for example around twice as many rural firms report having goods or services suitable for exporting than those which currently export. Rural areas are also at the forefront of major socio-economic trends such as an Ageing Society and Clean Growth – two of the Strategy’s Grand Challenges.

So how can rural representatives and other stakeholders ensure that Local Industrial Strategies are as relevant, accessible and visible to rural as to city and urban areas? How can the Strategy’s Grand Challenges be converted from grand and society–wide challenges to regional and local opportunities for rural areas?

These questions were tackled at the workshop by a unique gathering of expertise. Bringing together stakeholders from literally across the UK – from the Isles of Scilly in the south to Shetland in the north – the event gained insights from leaders in government-sector organisations, sub-national agencies and partnerships, business and community organisations, researchers from Newcastle University’s National Innovation Centres for Ageing and Data, and those of us long-engaged in researching small-medium enterprises (SMEs) and rural economies.

It was clear in our discussions that all of the Industrial Strategy’s features and foundations are also drivers of rural productivity or growth. Each raises long-standing and distinct rural challenges and prospects that require attention, which play out differently across the diversity of rural places, yet often remain underexplored or underutilised.  A short report from the workshop and further info is available here.

In summary, participants highlighted several prerequisites if rural contributions to the Industrial Strategy are to be fully realised:

• Meaningful sub-regional devolution of Industrial Strategy measures coupled with local co-developed solutions and capacity building to enable local ‘place’-defined delivery.
• Strengthened engagement of micro and small enterprises in developing and delivering Industrial Strategy measures and sector deals, with bolstered commitment to involving rural businesses.
• Improved networking and representation of rural firms to generate strategic thinking, leadership and collaboration.
• Enrolment of rural economies as leading lights or test beds for ideas and innovation linked to the Grand Challenges.
• Appropriate metrics, indicators and investment thresholds for defining rural outcomes and measuring success.
• Enhanced evidence, sensitive to local diversity in drivers, needs and opportunities, so that Local Enterprise Partnerships and other stakeholders are better equipped to embed rural contributions in local industrial strategies, sector and area growth deals.

One of our own highlights of the day was to hear a senior Defra official welcome this occasion as a rare event at which the main Department ‘talking rural’ was not the government’s own rural champion Defra, as is normally the case, but instead a host of leading contributions from other government departments, especially BEIS, MHCLG, DFT, DFE, Scotland Office etc[1]. Indeed, in his keynote presentation, Sam Lister, the Director of Industrial Strategy, made the case for respecting rural as an equal partner in the UK’s future economies. Both interventions say a lot about the positive progress made by both departments in considering the rural reach of the Strategy and the contributions of many stakeholders who have worked to enhance recognition of rural areas and their economies. Many participants welcomed this new recognition and shared space. Continuing this shared endeavour is more essential than ever, and at Newcastle University we are keen to help to extend this dialogue and convert ‘talking rural’ into visible and valued actions for the future.

[1] Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), Ministry Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), Department for Transport (DFT) and Department for Education (DFE)

In our latest blog, Senior Lecturer in Agribusiness Dr Diogo Souza Monteiro talks about his participation in the Oxford Meetings on Food System Impact Valuation, and the growing need to change food consumption habits in order to preserve natural capital.

The Oxford Meetings on Food System Impact Valuation, hosted by Dr. John Ingram, leader of the food program at Oxford University Environment Change Institute, joins academia, businesses, governmental agencies and non-governmental organisations to work on Natural Capital Valuation and its implications. Now in its third year, the focus of 2019 was to capitalise on the forward momentum on the methods and initiatives already in place to evaluate natural capitals. I was fortunate to attend and lead sessions at the third meeting, held on the 15 and 16^th of April.

Food System Impact Valuation Meeting

Before I highlight some of the main initiatives discussed, it is worth recapping how we have arrived at discussions surrounding natural capital and its implications. Although not new, there is an emerging debate in policy and business communities surrounding how to manage the effects of climate change on human societies. The 1983 Brundtland report “Our Common Future” defined ‘sustainable development’ and highlighted the need to reconcile human activities with the natural environment and biosphere that supports our societies. However, only now is there a sense of urgency and an increasing consensus that, if we (as a society) persist in our current paradigm, large parts of the earth may no longer be habitable for future generations.

In order to mitigate the impacts of human activity on our planet, we need to be able to identify, understand, measure and manage those activities and their consequences which contribute towards climate change. In particular, food production and consumption are heavily dependent on natural resources. Therefore, there are several groups developing and implementing frameworks to evaluate the impact of different food sectors in the natural environment – hence the importance of the Oxford Meetings.

Since the concept of natural capital has been clarified, several organisations have developed frameworks and methodologies to measure this for both countries and businesses, such as the Natural Capital Coalition protocol. Additional sustainability frameworks have been developed that reflect a growing awareness of other capitals. These more holistic accounts of capital take into account natural, human, social and economic (manufacturing and financial) capitals in human activities. These “true cost” protocols are particularly pertinent in relation to food, such as those proposed by the Sustainable Food Trust or the FReSH true cost of food program. The purpose of these is to inform public and corporate policy and investment decisions, the latter used to identify the risks of different activities and their revenue streams. Moreover, they will impact our individual behaviour as consumers, including the discouragement of the consumption of products with high impacts on nature. Most discussions at the Oxford Meeting centred on the need for harmonisation of these true cost account frameworks and, more importantly, on how these can be used to support consumer decisions and promote dietary change.

Lady Margaret Hall – the conference venue

As part of the meeting, participants were divided in groups to discuss emerging issues on several themes including standardisation, finance, public policy and research projects. I led discussions in one of the public policy sessions, focusing on how the principles and methods of true cost accounting can inform policy promoting the use of food labels to increase transparency and foster consumer behaviour change. Examples of labels designed to help consumers make more informed choices in relation to some dimension of natural impact include the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) label in wood and paper products and the Rainforest Alliance label in foods.

However, there are several issues with these that were discussed during the session. Firstly, not all labels are equal or transparent surrounding the claim(s) they are communicating, and they do not necessarily take into account the true costs of the activities they are promoting. Another issue is that not all labels resonate with the consumer, with one participant highlighting that most consumers make choices solely based on price, meaning a label on a more expensive product that might reflect the true cost of production will not be chosen by most consumers.

Finally, the proliferation of labels communicating some dimension of sustainability — often with conflicting messages — makes choices difficult for consumers. This does, however, highlight an opportunity to develop a comprehensive label underpinned by sound food standards and true costs accounting methods for products in a given sector. If supported through policy to ensure a mandatory label, products with higher true costs of production would not be able to be carry lower prices. However, we are far from a consensus on methodologies and frameworks to determine what the true costs of a food product are, and the discussion session concluded that it is premature to propose such a label. Also, implementing mandatory labels based on true cost principles will be controversial and the charging the true cost of food may have important welfare and equity implications that need to be taken into account.

Labelling and underlying food standards are topics where there is growing expertise in CRE and SNES. For example, Dr Luca Panzone has done significant contributions to our understanding of the impact of carbon footprint labels on consumer choice. I have examined whether nutrition labels drove product reformulation and how alternative ways to convey diet information motivated consumer behaviour. CRE is therefore well positioned to continue to play a role in this important and urgent agenda.

PhD student Chisaki Fukushima talks about her experience of working for the Cultural Models of Nature project, and highlights key concepts from this that she will use in her doctoral research.

Cultural Models of Nature (CMN), a project funded by the U.S. National Sciences Foundation between 2011 and 2016, endeavoured to understand the cultural models of primary food producers around the world – their collective mental systems and processes as well as models of knowledge transfer and use.  Findings from the project have now been summarised in a book of the same name, to which my mentor Dr. Hidetada Shimizu and I contributed a chapter.

Cultural Models of Nature book

A key goal of the project was to compare CMNs on a global scale, particularly in terms of climate change. All project collaborators who contributed to the book report that primary food producers are struggling with the effects of climate change.  These producers perceived it to be affecting their livelihoods in different ways. Sometimes its impacts were direct, such as changes in weather patterns, temperature and storms (including flooding), and sea level rises.  Other times they were more indirect, for example market price turmoil – a result of equipment or oil price fluctuations and political manipulation. In complex economic and political systems, primary food producers struggle to understand not only what happens in these systems, but how to cope with the issues present.

Nature (with a lowercase ‘n’) – defined in this project as natural objects, environments and others — is the longest and strongest relationship for humans. Scientists and philosophers learn about nature from a careful examination of people’s livelihoods and subsistence patterns as there is always a relationship between cultural ideas of Nature (with an uppercase ‘N’) and any group dependent on nature for their livelihood ( i.e. all humans). The natural environment we see has already been permanently changed by humans. Human-aggravated disasters are affecting not only current, but also future generations. Therefore, we must focus on learning what humans know and understand to help them adapt to this new, harsher reality. The CMN scholars in this volume seek to understand decision making through clear and consistent mental models shared across a group, while also reflecting on cognitive models of the world. Specifically, ethnographers involved in this collection reject the notion that primary food producers are a ‘problem’ of irrational thinking and instead see their decision making as logical.

This addresses profound epistemological questions about what we can know about others. CMN tells us to open our eyes and look at the available evidence from people’s existence and livelihoods through discourse analysis, observation, and experimental data production and analysis. The different sites generated data from mixed and inter-subjective cultural analysis, borrowing from psychology and anthropology in order to produce data about primary food producers’ knowledge. This approach assumes there is an isomorphism, or similar process to do with what people say and what they know. This knowledge system recognizes cognition as central to individual decision making and attempts to formally describe what people know and the relationship between elements of their knowledge, or ‘folk knowledge’.

In the chapter I co-authored with Hidetada Shimizu, we introduced two key concepts that are integral to local cultural models of nature[1]. A study of Japanese farmers found particularly high salience (or importance) of Human Relationships in those two narratives regarding risk supported by more than two analyses.

Japanese farmers experienced the Green Revolution in the 1950s and 1960s along with the post-war social infrastructure such as land consolidation and technological development. They are well educated and knowledgeable, use modern technology, and enjoy an independent middle-level income that relies on robust management skills.  However, their collective peasant value of ‘Hyaku-sho’ community structure is still critical to their production and is very similar to what it was twenty years ago. It is therefore not only the nature of each agent that is important but also the relationships between agents. Social networks are particularly critical for managing risks from labour shortages, market price fluctuations, succession of the family business and coping with climate change. For the primary food producers included in the study, their success strategy emphasised overcoming risk, threats, and eliminating elements that might negatively affect their products. The entity which we can understand as ‘social relation’ almost appears to be one social organism – a kind of human eusociality.

The other narrative articulates the idea that crops are not just ‘products’, but are provided by the mercy of a holy nature and are a personified risk. This came through in a detailed study of the use of metaphor and semantic causal analysis. For example, farmers claim that they cannot control what nature does to them since nature is like humans, who make mistakes, and humans themselves are part of nature. Nature is personified both as something that can provide things, as well as a systemic relationship of components that includes people. It is possible that this is a result of the fusion of secular Buddhism and indigenous animism, but at present, we lack the evidence to make such a claim. It is, nevertheless, something I would like to explore in the future.

These two narratives are echoed across other sites in the project, and it is fascinating to see the differences and similarities between them. These may be the result of different environments, cultural histories, religions, economic policies, citizenship or, more likely, a complex interaction of all of these and other factors. The two narratives that we focus on in our chapter see risk as one of the attributes of nature, but humans as the ones who experience the consequences of that risk. Since humans face the consequences, they are responsible for managing risk. Successful risk management allows people to find Ikigai (the purpose/value of life) through a belief in surviving difficulties like economic crisis, climate change and natural disasters.

The work I did for Cultural Models of Nature with my mentor, Dr Hidetada Shimizu, was rewarding and profoundly inspiring. I am now continuing this work in my doctoral research, titled ‘Cultural Models of Risk’. I will extend the work I did with Dr. Shimizu to understand belief systems and cultural perceptions of the risk of radiation in food and in a nuclear host community.

[1] The original data belongs to Dr Hidetada Shimizu (Northern Illinois University).

A report released earlier this week by CRE’s Carmen Hubbard provides a detailed analysis of how the UK agriculture may be affected by Brexit. Working with colleagues from the Scottish Rural College, Agri-food & Biosciences Institute and a range of stakeholders, the report looks at all aspects of agriculture across all parts of the UK.

The UK agri-food sector will be one of the most seriously affected by Brexit. Not only is it dependent on trade relations both with the European Union and with the Rest of the World, but it is also a sector dependent on migrant labour, and the most heavily subsidised and regulated under the present Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

The research shows that under selected trade scenarios the impact of Brexit on UK agriculture will be far from uniform. The trade scenario effects depend on the net trade position, and/or world prices. Under a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU, agricultural impacts are relatively modest. By contrast, unilateral removal of import tariffs (UTL) has significant negative impacts on prices, production and incomes. Adoption of the current EU’s WTO tariff schedule for all imports (including those from the EU) favours net importer sectors (e.g., dairy) and harms net exporter sectors (e.g., sheep).

These trade effects, however, might be overshadowed by the foreign exchange rate and possible labour market changes and other non-tariff barriers.

Given the dependence of many UK farms on CAP direct payments, their removal, predictably, worsens the negative impacts of new trade arrangements and offsets positive impacts. Indeed, the elimination of direct payments will affect most farm businesses, but the magnitude varies significantly by enterprise and devolved administration.

The research shows differences in effects at farm and sector level, implying that although the agricultural industry can survive and adapt there is likely to be considerable hardship for individuals, families and businesses.

Changes in the agricultural industry could have more far reaching effects in other sectors, such as food processing.

Changes in land use may relieve environmental pressures, for example in areas experiencing over grazing, but could increase risks of pollution in others. Consideration will be needed for policies to manage any transition.

The Westminster and devolved governments may need to consider the implications of such changes for people, the food supply, land use and the countryside, and their responses and policy approaches to managing this may vary.

However, uncertainty during negotiations regarding the Withdrawal Agreement has been (and continues to be at the time of writing) a major problem, making it extremely difficult for farmers and the agri-food industry to plan for the future.

Read the report in full here.

This blog originally appeared on the Northern Rural Network Site, written by Paul Cowie.

Adrienne Attorp and Beth Clark summarise what they learned about policy making from Professor David Freshwater during his recent visit to the CRE.

This February, the Centre for Rural Economy (CRE) was lucky enough to receive a visit from Professor David Freshwater of the University of Kentucky. While here, he spent an afternoon with CRE PhD students and early career researchers, and spoke to us about his work as a researcher and policy analyst in the field of rural and agricultural policy, which has included many years working as a consultant for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). He also shared with us his thoughts and reflections on farming, including what he thinks are the biggest challenges facing the industry, and imparted some words of wisdom to those of us interested in working to influence policy. Some highlights:

The Challenges facing Farming

According to Professor Freshwater, policy is the biggest threat to agriculture because it is in a constant state of flux. This observation could not be timelier for a UK-based audience given the imminent arrival of Brexit and the looming threat of a ‘no deal’ exit, or a last-minute announcement of tariffs. Brexit aside, given the short-term focus of politicians that accompanies short stints in power and party changes, and the lack of overall strategy, it is not surprising to find that this makes longer-term planning difficult for farmers.

We also discussed the structure of farming and farm income, with farm support moving away from direct payments in a number of instances towards a more risk management-based approach. This reflects a need to change the approach to payments as a country and its economy develop. Related to this, Professor Freshwater highlighted the need for diversification, citing off-farm income sources as a means of risk mitigation. While some would portray this as a negative narrative as it suggests the farm is not a profitable entity without a separate source of income, Professor Freshwater offered a different perspective, arguing that a portfolio of uncorrelated income sources can in fact provide more resilience in an ever-changing climate. He pointed out that most households are multi-income, so why not farming households also?

How to Influence Policy Making

Politics precedes policy (and audience matters!)

“If you want to change policy, you have to talk to politicians”, Professor Freshwater told us. He also underscored that in order to influence policy effectively, researchers must “be immersed in the politics of [their] time”. Why? Because it is essential to understand both the context in which policymakers are working and the agendas they have, in order that research can fit into this context and align with current political values. This does not mean ‘selling out’, so to speak, it just means it is important to think about how you frame the problem and potential solutions, so as to make the most impact. Audience matters.

In addition, Professor Freshwater highlighted that policy can struggle with the unique. Generalizable findings and recommendations are much more suited to political interests. Thus, it is important to consider the smallest number of variations a policy may have while still being effective. He also stressed the need to ensure that any policy suggestions are both cost and outcome effective.

Further, similar to the pressures farmers contend with, the time constraints faced by policymakers make implementing long-term change difficult. With changes to political parties happening every four-to-five years or less, planning in two-year periods is often more feasible, with short-term recommendations more likely to be implemented.

Tell a story

Anecdotes and stories make policy impacts real, we learned. In policymaking, this is where qualitative research comes into its own. These anecdotes and stories should form part of your overall narrative on a subject, but crucially, we must always back them up with statistics. Furthermore, once you have your narrative, stick to it. Never contradict yourself!

Some final pearls of wisdom…

To be effective outside of academia there is a need to avoid the ‘tunnel vision’ that academics so often have, and to have an overview (even a not very in-depth one) of other disciplines. (This is evidently a strength of the CRE, given the diverse expertise of staff and students, not to mention the broad range of collaborators that we have and continue to work with.)

And finally, Professor Freshwater made a plug for theory, emphasising that, by approaching research from a theoretical perspective, researchers can be deductive, as well as uniform in their approach to comparing and evaluating different policy alternatives. This subsequently provides rigour to their work.

So, what are the take-home messages? Other than the need to ensure we keep an open mind and read more broadly, we came away with a number of key points for preparing a policy brief:

• Create and tell a story about why your research is important
• Provide evidence of the impacts of what you are recommending
• Be consist in telling this same story to different people
• Consider how generalizable your findings are

Many thanks to Professor Freshwater for helping the CRE’s early career researchers expand their research arsenal. Watch out policy world!

Frances Rowe writes about an exciting new cultural collaboration between Newcastle University and the University of Tokyo.

Project colleagues

A unique experiment in cultural collaboration and exchange began last week with the launch event of the Contemporary Arts in Rural Development project.  Conceived and led by Dr Menelaos Gkartzios of the Centre for Rural Economy, along with Dean of Culture and the Creative Arts Prof Vee Pollock, both at Newcastle University, and Associate Professors Hironori Yagi and Nanami Toishi of the University of Tokyo. Financial support comes from the University’s Institute for Creative Arts Practice, and the project is backed by both the Economic and Social, and Arts and Humanities Research Councils in the UK. The project brings together academics and arts practitioners to explore the intersection between the arts and rural development in both countries. The aim is to enable each to learn from the other with exciting possibilities for cross-fertilization of ideas and potential projects.

Eager to share perspectives and experience, participants from across different disciplines and practices entered into the spirit of working across boundaries from the outset. The first two days encompassed a broad canvas of discovery and knowledge that was consolidated on the last day through a field trip to Berwick upon Tweed in rural Northumberland, hosted by James Lowther of Berwick Visual Arts and partner organisation in CRE’s artist in residency programme.

Interdisciplinarity may be in vogue but making it work is a different matter.  Often working across disciplines throws up challenges of conflicting knowledges and ways of knowing, and cries out for a common language or at least the need for translation. For me the lightbulb moment happened when Dr Julie Crawshaw talked about practices. The rich array of presentations and conversations took us on a journey from the human: nature relations of contemporary philosophical practice, and the place of farming and landscape in the cultural imaginaries of both Japan and the UK (although these are different), to contemporary arts practices in the countryside as a broad response to landscape and place, to rural development as a set of practices working with and beyond art: taking the aesthetic responses of artists and turning them into opportunities for rural regeneration.

Museum of Picture Book Art. Credit: http://www.echigo-tsumari.jp/eng/

The case of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale in the south east of Japan illustrates the journey of practice. This arts festival – think an equivalent to the Venice Biennale – is held every three years and is the largest arts festival in Japan and the largest oudoor art festival in the world. Started by a cultural entrepreneur motivated by an ethos of sustainability, it attracts international artists of standing to respond to the issues of the Niigata Prefecture.  The issues are familiar: an ageing population farms the land while young people have deserted the countryside for better opportunities and the buzz of the city, leaving rural communities struggling to remain viable in the face of limited services and a dwindling workforce. The result is seen in abandoned farms and farmsteads, closed schools, derelict municipal buildings and disappearing services. Many of these changes are structural and global, so how can contemporary art make any inroad into such intractable forces? We learned the answer lies partly in local capacity to take the cultural value produced by the Triennale and convert it into something more lasting. To do so requires a translator in the system, in this case the NPO (non-profit organisation) Echigo-Tsumari Satoyama Collaborative Organisation. We heard from Tadahiro Asai first-hand how this happens on the ground. The artworks commissioned from the artists invited to participate in the Triennale are usually temporary. However, some pieces have been retained in the local community and have become visitor attractions in their own right, such as the extraordinarily vibrant Museum of the Picture Book that attracts visitors from all over Japan. Not only does the NPO maintain the permanent artworks as a visitor attraction, but it works with the artists to engage local communities in the making of the art for the festival, and in the years in between, building their capacity to engage with visitors, who reflect back to the community some of the history and tradition it has lost. The result is a regaining of community pride partly through recognition from outside of the value of their lives and landscapes, but also the practical embodiment of doing that helps give communities the tools for regeneration. The result is that a pervasive sense of hopelessness is being replaced by a feeling that ‘something else is possible’ – as discussed also by Dr Menelaos Gkartzios in the case of another art festival in remote rural Japan, the Oku-Noto Triennale.

Thinking in this way about practices provides a sort of conceptual Esperanto for interdisciplinarity, and I was struck by how different actors acted as translators at each juncture in the journey of practices.  And because of the gathering of different kinds of expertise, with participants committed to sharing and interacting with one another, we were doing interdisciplinary without it seeming a burden.

I could go on at length about the richness of the week’s interactions. Suffice to say that through collaboration, our developing partnership believes that something else is possible. I should personally like to thank the Japanese visitors, and all who came to the three days of this extended seminar, including artists, curators, academics and other practitioners, for generously sharing their perspectives and expertise, for being such engaging company and demonstrating a spirit of openness and willingness to share that makes the future of this project potentially powerful and exciting. I simply can’t wait for the next instalment when we return to Japan in May!

The CRE’s Dr Menelaos Gkartzios writes here about the Japanese take on “art in the countryside”, which he experienced first-hand last year during a 5 month stay in the country, and about exciting new opportunities made possible by the newly announced ESRC-AHRC UK-Japan Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities Connections Grant. 

What does art do? And what happens if you take artistic practice outside the museum, the art gallery, the cultural quarter, the metropolis itself? I have been working on these questions for a couple of years now, mainly through the collaborative art residency that we run between the University’s Centre for Rural Economy and Berwick Visual Arts. This has offered a rich context to explore notions not only of engaged arts practice, but also of artistic research. A special section for the academic journal Sociologia Ruralis on ‘art in the country’ is forthcoming, edited along with Dr Julie Crawshaw (Northumbria University) and Dr Marie Mahon (National University of Ireland, Galway). There seems to be an increased interest in the rural social world in established art venues; for example the Whitechapel Gallery has been running an exciting session on ‘The Rural’, and Guggenheim has already announced the ‘Countryside: the Future of the World’ exhibition).

Meanwhile, in the far Far East, contemporary art is taking place in the countryside. Last year I was given the opportunity to do fieldwork in rural Japan as part of a visiting associate professorship post at the University of Tokyo. I came across a tradition of significant contemporary art festivals in the most remote and depopulated locations of rural Japan – many of them led by the Tokyo-based Art Front Gallery, following the vision of its director, Fram Kitagawa, who has received praise for his contributions in this field. It was fascinating to observe how some Japanese art professionals even dismissed the very idea of the art experience in museums and formal art spaces as ‘western’. Of course art is abundant in Japan – it’s a philosophy that enters the everyday: from arranging flowers, to serving tea, from separating the public and the private social spheres in performative ways, to writing Japanese syllables and Chinese ideograms.

The research team at Oku-Noto

The most prolific of these art festivals has been the Echigo Tsumari Art Trienalle which takes place place in a disadvantaged mountainous area, but my fieldwork took place at the very first edition of the Oku-Noto Trienalle, also organised by Art Front Gallery, which coincided with my 5 month stay. Fieldwork included an ethnographic diary while attending the festival and visiting the artworks via structured bus guided tours, as well as in-depth interviews with visitors, curators and other art professionals, local policy makers and local community groups involved in the art-making. I would have never been able to do this work had it not been for my colleagues in Japan supporting this endeavour – particularly Dr Hironori Yagi and his students. We were a group, so important in Japanese culture.

The festival was so successful that it was difficult to find accommodation, so we stayed in a Buddhist temple instead – think of it: tatami rooms, low lights, emptiness. There was art even there. As I am going through my field notes of the festival, I read numerous stories about re-using abandoned buildings important for the rural community. At a closed school we rang the bells loud; a closed bath house – central in Japan’s social life – was filled with foam and people again. Nature is never to be underestimated in Japan and that was also evidenced in the artworks – some of them were actually destroyed because of typhoons. But nature was equally never glorified. Engaged artistic practice was abundant and residents talked with pride and strong emotions about being involved in the festival. And then there were the odd stories, the almost insignificant connections that the art festival made, that really mattered: getting lost and being looked after while cycling at night to view light installations; making friends.

‘Table Runner’ by Tomoko Konoike

I am extremely excited to say that this is only the beginning. We will explore further this adventure of art in the countryside across Japan and the UK. Our collaboration has just received funding from the newly announced ESRC-AHRC UK-Japan Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities Connections Grant. I am delighted to lead, with our University Dean of Culture and the Creative Arts, Professor Vee Pollock, a new research network with the University of Tokyo, Art Front Gallery and our established collaborators in the wider region, Berwick Visual Arts and Scotland’s Stove Network. The research network aims to explore the contribution and potential of contemporary art in support of sustainable rural development. Stay tuned and get out of the city.