This four year project, involving 18 organisations from 12 European countries, aims to explore the challenges and opportunities in rural areas for new and existing residents, and use this knowledge to put forward policy proposals which support the hopes and dreams of rural communities and act as a counterforce to the dominant trend of urbanisation. More details on the importance of this project are summarised in the short video below:

There are a number of workstreams in the Ruralization project, including foresight studies on the dreams of young people in rural areas, case studies of ‘promising practices’ already existing in rural areas, research into land governance, markets and tools to improve land access, and policy design and assessment.
‍

So far Shared Assets has largely been involved in exploring the Landworkers’ Alliance’s Farmstart Network as a potential promising practice for new entrants into agriculture, and supporting the research into improving access to land through our work on council farmland with CPRE and the New Economics Foundation. In the remainder of the project, we will focus on sharing widely the examples of good practice we have looked at both here in the UK and with other contexts across Europe, and feeding into the policy design work package. 

This project is funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No.817642.