Thursday, January 24, 2013

Go Rural Discussion at Scottish Parliament

Picked up from LinkedIn...

Graeme Dey MSP and Go Rural are hosting a discussion on rural tourism on Tuesday 29th January at the Scottish Parliament. We have 10 places for members of the Scottish Tourism Alliance.

The event is from 6pm to 8pm. If you are interested in how Scotland engages City residents with rural tourism and leisure businesses and how best small rural businesses collaborate with each other to deliver an authentic, quality experience then come along. I will be feeding back some findings from my Nuffield Scholarship study in New Zealand and Australia.

The organizers require to have names registered for security purposes by close of play Thursday 24th January 2013 and you should register using this link if interested.

Go Rural Scotland is a new initiative which was launched in July 2012 to encourage Scottish City residents and City visitors to make multiple trips into the countryside within 90 minutes of the City.

Go Rural aims to engage with consumers and encourage them to into rural areas of Scotland, from a weekly visit to a farm shop for food shopping through to a day out undertaking activities with the family, short breaks and longer holidays. Farm produce and local food and drink is an integral part of the Go Rural experience.

Go Rural would like to encourage more collaboration and joint working between Go Rural members and other businsses in their local area.

Rural Scotland has a large population of potential consumers on its doorstep both from Scottish cities but also from the large number of visitors coming to Scotland. There is potential to increase the amount of interaction between rural Scotland and the towns and cities of Scotland. This could have health beneftis for the Scottish population and economic benefits for the range of small rural businesses which Go Rural promotes.

This event will
  • feedback what has been achieved since July 2012 with the pilot with 50 businesses around the Edinburgh area
  • outline opportunities in the Year of Natural Scotland to extend Go Rural to another 9 Cities and towns in Scotland
  • describe an initiative in Fife where Go Rural is being used to promote and track rural businesses working with each other in the food and drink and tourism supply chain
  • feedback on best practice from other areas of the world by Caroline Millar, one of the directors of Go Rural, who is a current Nuffield Scholar looking at farm diversification and collaboration between rural businesses - study areas are Italy, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Canada, USA, Austria and the UK

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