UK researchers have won nearly half a million pounds in funding for a project seeking to improve knowledge exchange between rural businesses and communities.
The Countryside and Community Research Institute (CCRI), based at Gloucestershire University, secured the funding from Horizon Europe – an EU research programme.
The team is looking at how rural and farming businesses can innovate, exploring new approaches to sourcing and analysing rural information and data.
In turn, researchers want to aid rural planning in the UK and Europe, while considering the opportunities and challenges of climate change, demographic shifts and digitalisation.
The work will complement CCRI’s research role in the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE) in England.
Janet Dwyer, Professor of Rural Policy, said: “[We] are delighted to have secured funding from the Horizon Europe programme for RUSTIK to help support the research we are carrying out jointly with our partners in Europe.
“We will be working with Gloucestershire Rural Community Council and Torridge District Council in North West Devon as partners among a suite of 10 ‘Living Labs’ across Europe, researching rural diversity and societal transformations."
She added: “Our fieldwork in the UK will be linked to a network of other sites across Europe providing opportunities to experiment and share ideas, and generate lessons and recommendations for practice and for policy.
"This will help to improve access to better quality rural information for businesses and communities.”
The full consortium involves 31 partners across Europe and is led by the Institute for Rural Development Research in Frankfurt, Germany.
