Today we launch our weekly blog posts and social media messages on the theme of Redefining Peripherality.  We call for a radical rethink of perspectives and policy towards rural and island communities that values and builds on our communities’ assets, strengths and knowledge, rather than seeing them as backward and needing to catch up with ‘the centre’.

Based on extensive evidence, we believe that the deep experience and innovation within peripheral communities places them at the very heart and centre of solutions to societies’ most pressing challenges, not least the climate emergency.

We will be exploring what this means in practice in a series of events leading up to the World Rural Health Conference in Limerick, Ireland in June.  The first event, on January 19, starts with direct experience on the ground: showcasing, in partnership with Social Enterprise Scotland, the extraordinary community and social enterprises that are driving positive change in Uist, where CoDeL itself is based, in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.

We invite you to follow our blog and social media, and please get in touch if you would like to join an emerging network of practitioners and researchers seeking to put our new thinking into practice, from local action to national and international policy.

We would like to thank the Scottish Government and the Scottish Rural Network for supporting this communication work.  It emerged from a diverse partnership, cutting across diverse countries and territories from Canada to Finland, disciplines (including economics, health and human rights) and institutions, that delivered research on Covid economic impacts and recovery in remote communities across the Northern Periphery and Arctic (see here).