ruralnet|2006 was opened with an interesting session hosted by conference partners, emda.
Professor Andrew Atherton from University of Lincoln started the session with an introduction to the state of Market Towns in the East Midlands. He outlined his anaylsis rural non-urban settlements ('market towns' in the broadest sense). He showed interesting trends in economic activity, and connectivity (distance to nearest airport for example) outside of 5 main centres in the East Midlands and demonstrated that the picture is more complex than it may appear. He left the delegates with the question if non-urban settlements are more connected and more vibrant than we think, then is the region making the most of our market towns?
Matt Earnshaw from The Welland Sub-Regional Strategic Partnership went on to outline his experiences of benchmarking Market Towns in the Welland. He said that all 12 towns have been collecting data over the summer, and this data will soon be analysed in a series of reports that will provide a crucial baseline to help develop further projects.
Ray Edwards, Director of Rural Affairs, emda introduced a fantastic video telling the story of regeneration in the area. He also launched EMMTAS the East Midlands Market Towns Asset School, a new initiative for market town partnerships to help realise their assets.
Bruce Wakeling, Spalding Town Centre Manager than gave a fascinating insight into the Spalding Water Taxi which has now carried 40,000 passengers in less than two years and showed how what difference it has made to the town.
Finally Jim Hanrahan, Clerk to Newark Town Council gave an enlightening account of their experiences of working on projects in Market Towns. He described how partnerships are the catalysts for mixing the right 'chemicals' to produce positive results, including one of the key ingredients for Newark which is music.
The presentations from all of the above sessions are available on the ruralnet|2006 conference area of ruralnet|online.
Delegates will need your ruralnet|online login details and password. If you have forgotten or mislaid them, email support@ruralnet.org.uk or call 0845 130 5480.
If you did not attend the conference but would like to access presentations and more from this year's conference visit www.ruralnet.org.uk/join.htm for your free 14 day trial of ruralnet|online.
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