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In July 2010 the Rural Cultural Forum (RCF) www.ruralculture.org.uk produced a report, Creative Rural Communities (CRC), that sets out why a Rural Cultural Strategy (RCS) is needed and the form it might take. The report was intended to stimulate and inform public debate and to provide the basis for RCF, statutory agencies, and other interested parties to produce a feasible strategic plan in relation to culture, creativity and rural communities.

In presenting the case for a rural cultural strategy to DCMS, DEFRA and ACE, the Chairman of the Rural Cultural Forum Michael Hart said recently:

Rural communities and artists pledge to contribute up to  £1 billion per year or more to the national creative economy by 2015.

It’s a fairer share of the funding, and a ‘hand up’ ..that rural communities are now asking the arts and cultural funding sector for,  rather than a ‘hand out’

We challenge urban communities and urban arts and cultural sector to work with us to achieve our society’s goals for environmental sustainability

A recently finished independant report commissioned by the RCF, the Rural Cultural Strategy Independent Report: which looked at the 2010 Creative Rural Communties Report and the need for a rural cultural strategy.The authors of this new report are fully in support of the need for a Rural Cultural Strategy for rural areas.

The new report also highlights that:

Over the past fifteen years, arts policy and cultural funding have been almost entirely preoccupied with the discourse of urbanism, and in serving the needs of the urban creative industries and post-industrial urban regeneration.

In spite of a number of welcome initiatives, rural funding and support for culture remains piecemeal and under-coordinated.  The present situation is considered unfair and disadvantageous to rural communities with the result that the particular cultural needs,   artistic, aspirations and creative economic potentials of rural communities are not being fully addressed or supported.

Read the report at: http://www.ruralculture.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/RCS_web.pdf