Our Future Towns: Engaging Rural Enterprises in community placemaking and transport planning

Rural communities are facing challenges from many directions and government is looking to rural entrepreneurs to unlock their potential through innovative businesses and creative entrepreneurial approaches. The engaging enterprises project aimed to work with rural entrepreneurs to understand their feelings towards their towns and the rural transport system and provide insights and tools that might help other entrepreneurs and towns engage with these issues and respond to a range of issues including inclusive wellbeing and environmental restoration. 

The project builds on theories of system change and the need to engage with people’s hearts and minds as we develop solutions for our future towns. 

At a glance

We worked with NICRE and a range of civil partners to engage with local entrepreneurs in and around the Tyne valley, and included 14 different organisations in online surveys and workshops over the summer and autumn of 2021. They represented both for profit and social enterprises and included innovators and community evangelists, managers, shop owners, volunteers and teachers. They were involved in hospitality and tourism, eco-products and food and had expertise in infrastructure development and partnership building, amongst other skills.

• Participants shared common values including a sense of community, helping others and kindness; and valued hard work, passion and a drive to succeed - founded on a natural friendliness that’s part of a Northumbrian way of life.
• They saw value in their historic market towns and nature as well as the creativity needed to help them to thrive, but they also saw barriers in their communities including the challenge of working with councils and accessing funding as well as a lack of ambition, shared environments to come together and the need for smarter infrastructure.
• They saw positives during the pandemic, from support for those in need to the benefits of digital and also found themselves smiling when they were able to get around by bike or walk by the Tyne. But they were also frustrated by the way shared spaces were abandoned, the lack of support from government and the isolation that many people felt.
• When they thought about the future, they shared environmental, social and economic concerns and had overlapping visions for their future towns.

Their vision was centred on helping smaller and independent businesses and town councils work together to support thriving town centres that are self-sustaining and inclusive, with space and time for everyone. To achieve this they would like to see more community owned services and organisations that provide focal points for work, play and learning, connected to green spaces, public transport, walking and micro-mobility networks that reach within and between their towns. They recognise that private vehicles are an important part of rural communities but they don’t need to dominate their towns or the way we plan for the future.

During our workshops they responded to issues like sustainable place-making and transport by asking that communities come together for one vision and make decisions collectively.

• They want to see more collaboration and less competition especially between different levels of government.
• But they need to see more joined up funding and investment and the ability to build community enterprises that help everyone succeed.
• In terms of transport, they wanted to see integrated public transport but recognised that this needs political will.
• Until this happens cars will remain, individually, more convenient and cheaper too.

“We need to future proof and get people to think where we are going in ten years time (not what’s happening next week or next year). There’s a whole education piece that needs to be done there really.”

• When we discussed the costs of our current lifestyles and the risks from our common futures, they wanted a focus on poorer neighbourhoods and an investment in our town centres, recognising that many of these issues are “things that don’t get counted”.
• When it comes to the climate crisis, they told us that it's always easier to keep doing what we’ve always done, but we have to make our communities accountable for their impact and invest to make change.

“I don’t think you can be serious about responses to climate change without those sorts of practical actions that make it easy for people”

As entrepreneurs they wanted to develop social enterprises that fill gaps and create opportunities that aren’t based on profit all the time, and to nurture young talent in shared spaces where people can try out things and learn about setting up a business.

We developed four different themes, grouping different types of interventions within them to foster imagination and creativity during the workshops.

• Environment, well-being, walking (green)
• Social, inclusion, micro-mobility (blue)
• Cultural, integration, public transport (yellow)
• Economy, logistics, private transport (red)

While maps didn’t necessarily support holistic thinking, the range of themes encouraged a variety of creative responses.

• The environmental theme connected wellbeing centres, walking networks and renewable power.
• The social theme identified the need for inclusion and safety in our towns, through repurposing buildings for young and old to creating safe micromobility paths and hubs to support additional needs.
• The culture theme aimed to celebrate arts and culture in our rural communities but connect it with a joined up public transport system perhaps through a ‘Tyne Valley Together” transport and culture card.
• The economic theme asked that towns focus on their centres, provide logistics hubs to manage the growing delivery challenges in a smarter way and the provision of smaller pocket car parks that support a shift to E-charging and protect town centres from unnecessary traffic.

From our perspective, we need to see more radical change and it will only happen with joined up and creative thinking that engages with entrepreneurs holistically but also with the wider community. We need every market town to create a heart for its community to come together, and every train station to act as a multi-modal interchange that helps people embrace a less car dominated future, and we need to help entrepreneurs and communities come together around shared assets so that communities can grow new connections and businesses that are fit for the twenty first century.