The Interreg project Rural Alliances brought together 12 partners from North West Europe to tackle the challenges of demographic change in rural areas. These challenges included: young people leaving rural towns and villages; the elderly becoming increasingly isolated & in need of social and medical care; shops, post offices, pubs, public toilets and telephone boxes closing; and increasingly difficult environments for setting up and running sustainable businesses.

The project tackled these challenges by actively bringing rural communities and businesses together, capitalising on their two distinct attributes: rural businesses with their “make it happen” attitudes, with the values of rural communities of loyalty, pride and self-esteem to create over 76 Rural Alliances. Together they have reshaped their areas to make them friendly, buzzing and vibrant, creating a more stable future for all their residents.

Ina Horlings from the Rural Sociology Group was a member of the Policy and Advisory Panel of Rural Alliances. The project developed handbooks on rural governance and financial engineering, inspiring videos, a skils plotting exercise, and various fact sheets and policy papers, all available on the website. For communities who want to know how vibrant their community is, a new tool was developed to measure rural vibrancy.The final report can be downloaded here.