International Douzelage

Sherborne Symposium: Thursday 12 - Sunday 15 October 2006

"Rural Communities: Today and Tomorrow"

 Objective:

• To study certain aspects of the changes affecting communities that comprise the Douzelage Towns and their hinterlands;
• To exchange information and experiences and draw on successful solutions;
• To develop a longer-term study (5 years) of areas of particular stress or
  difficulty where exchanges or joint efforts could benefit our communities;
• In all of this work to particularly address the needs of young people.

Background:

In all EU countries there are growing social, economic and political pressures affecting rural areas and the small towns in those areas. These pressures are imposed, inter alia, through:

• the urbanisation of our societies;
• the mobility of labour, with consequences on the cohesion of the family;
• housing pressures, both affordability, particularly for the young, and availability;
• central government policy dicta versus local community perceptions of need;
• changes in the quantity and location of industrial and service jobs;
• changes to farming and other rural practices brought about by EU regulations, market forces and other pressures;
• increasing disposable wealth nationally and needs for recreation in rural areas.

Questions:

Because all of our towns are small and are surrounded by rural areas, they form a suitable random group to study how the forces listed above, and others, are putting pressures on small communities throughout the EU and how we are responding. Within our communities it is often the younger people who need to adapt faster in order to secure educational and professional qualifications, jobs and accommodation as the basis for starting their own careers and families.

• Are they able to do that within their towns of origin or do they move away?
• Are they replaced by others of a similar age?
• If not, how are communities coping with changing age structures?
• Is the urban magnet too strong and is it pulling wealth away from smaller
  towns or are these towns adapting and finding ways to compensate?
• Are there success stories in any of our towns on which others could build?
• For those towns that rely on tourism, or other seasonal activities, how do they manage in the "off season"?
• Have our communities been able to get help from central governments for initiatives designed to improve local opportunities, such as jobs and housing, as well as infrastructure to maintain or develop local economies?

 Community:

In looking at these issues we might also consider how the perception of a community has changed.

• Is it still the local neighbourhood, the town where we live, the region in which our town is located or, in this age of increasing mobility and information exchange, do we now define our community as a wider circle of friends, contacts and acquaintances with whom we keep in contact through intermittent meetings, the telephone, the internet or other ways?
• How do young people define their community? Has it extended beyond the school or college, youth centre or sports team to chat rooms, school twinning friends and other remoter contacts?
• What is this doing for the younger people's social skills and support groups? Is it leading to a loss of the traditional contacts between the family and the child's friends and acquaintances and does this matter?
• Are young people losing loyalty and attachment to their places of origin and how does this affect the local community?
• Or, are the vision and mind-broadening opportunities provided by these new contact opportunities helping our young people to mature and manage life stresses better?

The Project:

• Sherborne Douzelage proposes to its partners that "Rural Communities: Today and Tomorrow" be the subject of our Symposium in October 2006. We would like each partner town to look at the issues outlined above between now and the Symposium and to draw up a description of the situation in each town. In doing this we suggest inputs from a range of organisations, including schools, youth groups, local authorities, community health experts, churches and perhaps universities. We realise that some member towns may have less resources than others to devote to this but, if a suitable co-ordinator is appointed soon, each town should be able to produce even a short descriptive piece on this subject.
• Case studies might be drawn up of areas where particularly effective local
• solutions have been adopted, to be presented to the Symposium.
• We invite a specialist in the area of community development come to
• Sherborne as part of your delegation, ready to contribute to a debate led by our own local professionals.
• In addition, we invite you to identify, at an early stage, two young people (17-25 years) who would join your delegation to participate in two working studies in fields associated with the theme. Our intention is that these studies would be professionally led and would report to the panel of specialists.
• From all of this we would plan to produce a report that we trust would be of use in each of our communities.
• Depending on the outcome of this work, we would like to suggest that Douzelage continue to maintain a watching brief on developments in each town for a period of 5 years, encouraging information exchanges between community developments professionals. There could be time allocated during each autumn meeting of Douzelage for an update.

Details?

Webpage?

Who?

Sherborne Douzelage Committee

douzelageSherborne(at)We dont like SPAMhome.uk