Category Archives: Uncategorized

A Celebration of Newcastle University’s Centre for Rural Economy

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Professor Mark Shucksmith OBE
Professor Mark Shucksmith writes this blog following Newcastle University’s award of the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education 2014. This honoured the valuable and influentional research by the University’s Centre for Rural Economy.

This year Newcastle University’s Centre for Rural Economy (CRE) is not only celebrating its 21st birthday. It’s also celebrating the award to Newcastle University of a Queen’s Anniversary Award for its pioneering research into rural economies and societies.

Rural communities’ future prosperity will rely on businesses in a range of many sectors, not just farming; and on people’s capacity to shape their own future through processes of ‘networked rural development’ and ‘place-shaping’, supported by an enabling state. That this is now widely accepted internationally owes much to the pioneering work of staff across Newcastle University, led by the CRE, established in 1992 as a focus for interdisciplinary study and societal engagement. Over the last 21 years, CRE has been a world-renowned research centre in this field, and the novel idea of an economy beyond agricultural development, nurtured by rural communities that have their own rich and diverse sources of dynamism, has now become mainstream. Continue reading →

Developing a Stronger Voice in the North East – Working for Everyone?

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On Tuesday 28th January, NISR Director Professor Mark Shucksmith  gave the following presentation at The January Conference: Developing a Stronger Voice for the NE, held at the Centre for Life in Newcastle upon Tyne. The conference, supported by the Community Foundation, ippr north, Millfield House Foundation, Northern Rock Foundation and the Webb Memorial Trust, was focused around issues of citizen action and community organising in the NE. This presentation offered some context for those discussions.

What can the people of the North East themselves do to ensure that the region’s best days lie ahead, and not in the past? At a time when the region faces severe cutbacks in its public services and public investment, while the balance of the national economy shifts ever further toward the south-east (whatever is said about rebalancing), can we think of new ways forward?

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New Youth Projects and the General Election Manifesto Competition

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Jonathan Mayes, Newcastle University Medical Student and overall winner of the NISR General Election Manifesto Competition, writes this blog on his proposal and why he felt compelled to try and tackle the problems associated with childhood poverty. You can contact Jonny with any thoughts or feedback you have by emailing: j.w.mayes@ncl.ac.uk.

After receiving an email about entering the competition I initially dismissed the idea. The idea of extra work didn’t appeal. However I saw an NSPCC statistic saying 31% of children in Newcastle are growing up in poverty. I didn’t know what this meant. What does it mean to be in poverty in the UK? I assumed that in a developed country that this statistic has no meaning. However I was shocked to discover poverty in the UK means growing up cold, hungry and not being able to enjoy activities with friends. Poverty impacts on health, educational opportunities and reduces self-esteem.

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Crofting Reform

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Professor Mark Shucksmith OBE
Professor Mark Shucksmith is the Director of NISR. In 2009 he was awarded an OBE for services to rural development and to crofting in the New Year Honours. Last month, at the Centre for Rural Economy’s 21st birthday celebration at Alnwick Castle, he reflected on the Crofting Inquiry which he chaired.

One day in November 2006 I received a phone call asking if I would like to chair the Scottish Government’s Inquiry into the Future of Crofting. It would be like the 1886 Napier Commission and the 1955 Taylor Commission, but wouldn’t be called a Commission to avoid confusion with the Crofters Commission. (You’ll gather that crofting is characterised by complexity!) The Labour/Lib Dem Coalition Government wished to reform crofting, but their ideas had been defeated in the Scottish Parliament and heavily criticised. A new vision was urgently needed, and many thought the crofting system was being fatally damaged. How could I refuse?

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Newcastle Journalism Students in Global 24-hour Digital project: Reporting Poverty

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David Baines

David Baines is a senior lecturer in Journalism at Newcastle University. David spent many years as a journalist working for daily newspapers, and writes this blog following the Global Pop-Up Newsroom on 16th November. David’s journalism students investigated critical themes of austerity, poverty and deprivation, in collaboration with colleagues in the US, India and Taiwan. The Newcastle University students reported live from Newcastle on Saturday 16th November whilst their colleagues reported using the same methods from Los Angeles, Chennai and Taipei. Follow Pop Up News on Twitter @PopUpNewsUk

Journalism students in Newcastle, the US, India and Taiwan have taken part in a 24-hour global project reporting digitally on deprivation, poverty and austerity. They used their mobile phones, and social media such as Twitter and Facebook, to report live from the streets of Newcastle on Saturday, November 26 – while their colleagues were out and about in Los Angeles, Chennai and Taipei.

The students had spent several weeks researching, making contacts and preparing some content in advance to be loaded up on the day to two websites, one run from Newcastle University (www.popupnewsuk.net), and one from California (www.popupnewsroom.net).

The students in the UK, US and India also posted their work on Twitter and their live reports on the Saturday were distributed on Twitter. One hashtag alone, #livepoverty, attracted more than a third of a million impressions on the day.

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Cornell University

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Professor Mark Shucksmith OBE
Professor Mark Shucksmith writes this blog following a visit to Cornell University, Ithaca, USA. Cornell is ranked in the top 20 universities world-wide and has similar societal priorities as Newcastle University. Creating a strong link with Cornell University would help us here at Newcastle to realise the vision of a world-class civic university.

Cornell University is “centrally isolated” in upstate New York’s Finger Lakes region, around 4-5 hours from Boston, New York or Toronto, perched on a hillside overlooking Lake Cayuga, with the 2300 acre campus cut through by spectacular wooded gorges and waterfalls. The town of Ithaca is an oasis of liberal values, characterised by the alternative and the artistic, with independent bookshops, coffee shops and restaurants clustered around a small downtown (the Ithaca Commons).

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OECD Conference

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Professor Mark Shucksmith OBE

Professor Mark Shucksmith is the Director of NISR. Mark writes this blog on the potential of combined authorities following his attendance at the OECD conference in Bologna, Italy 23rd-25th October 2013.

As the North-East prepares to establish a new Combined Authority, covering the seven council areas of Northumberland, Durham, Newcastle, Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Sunderland from April 2014, what lessons might be learned from experience elsewhere? Last week I attended the OECD’s conference on Rural-Urban Partnerships, which presented lessons learned from case studies in 11 countries around the world. Most interesting were the experiences of Nuremberg in Germany (which I studied as one of OECD’s experts), Geelong in Australia, and Rennes in France.

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Welcome!

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Welcome to the blog for the Newcastle Institute for Social Renewal!

Social Renewal is a wide and varied term, and sometimes it’s not easy to understand what it really means. By hosting this blog we’re hoping to show that Social Renewal is important to each and every one of us, in ways you might not realise.

We’re really interested in hearing your thoughts, so please get involved! Use the comments button on any of the upcoming posts to have your say on the important issues facing society today. Also, if you have any ideas for future blogs just let us know. Email socialrenewal@ncl.ac.uk and we would love to have you as a guest blogger! You can also follow us on Twitter or visit the main website for more information on our research activities.

Coming soon… Our first blog by our Director Professor Mark Shucksmith.