Rural economy project travels off the beaten road
For sociologist Bill Reimer, capacity building and knowledge transfer are not top-down notions.
Reimer is completing the third stage of research that has spanned a decade in the New Rural Economy (NRE) project. The project, currently financed jointly by Industry Canada and SSHRC, has closely analyzed conditions in 32 rural sites across Canada.
The project is unique — no one else is doing this work — and exceptionally successful. In fact, it has just been shown to members of NORFACE, an organization of key European research officials, who were in Montreal recently for a two-day conference on user engagement and knowledge transfer.
NRE is now focused on building the capacity for economic development and the ways that rural and urban economies depend on each other.
Through it all, NRE researchers have remained committed to placing rural communities central in planning and decision-making. With the exception of Concordia, partners in the project all come from smaller institutions.
Annual meetings are held in the communities they work with, “even though that means increased costs when you travel off the beaten road,” Reimer said.
And he means that quite literally. To get to Twillingate, Nfld., researchers from across the country had to fly to Halifax, then take another flight to St. John’s. From there, they boarded a propeller plane so small there was only one seat on each side of the aisle for the one-hour flight to Gander. Twillingate was another three-hour drive along back roads. They got 200 conference participants to take the route, though.
“And Twillingate, with its huge icebergs, is actually a tourist town,” Reimer added, saying that there were enough hotel beds to accommodate them.
In other towns, they usually need to arrange for billets in private homes. In Coaticook, Que., the only place that could accommodate their meetings was a barn. Food was prepared at the nearby high school (the biggest kitchen in town) and its students were trained in table service.
“After we left, they began marketing themselves as a conference centre,” Reimer said.
When asked about communicating results back to the rural sites, Reimer said that at the meeting in Tweed, Ont. they got the licensing and equipment necessary to set up a small radio station in the old theatre they were using. Repeated broadcasts to “come on down” and a CD from the local school of songs and poems brought an uncertain group of local kids down to the theatre.
Reimer said they were given microphones and some training and before the end of the day, they were interviewing researchers about why they were there and demanding they present their work in accessible terms.
“The community responded to that because it was their own children getting information.” It’s an experiment they’ve repeated elsewhere.
As this phase of research draws to a close, Reimer said that NRE “broke its rule about rural meetings and went to Ottawa to present results directly to decision-makers.”
Even so, they took politicians to Lanark, Ont., for the day. “You don’t recognize how urban-focused we are until you’re relying on a school bus for transportation and your cell phones can’t pick up a signal.”