By Dr Dyfan Powell, Wavehill The idea that economic development creates jobs and allows Welsh speakers to work and live in the area[1] is one that is at the forefront of economic and language policies. It perhaps stems from the long-standing narrative that economic...
As a result of Covid a number of challenges have arisen in rural Wales in recent months and certainly one of the biggest tensions is the relationship of rural communities with tourism. As we entered the beginning of lockdown tensions arose between many within the...
By Dr Dyfan Powell, Wavehill The ONS statistics show that thousands of young people leave the Arfor[1] area each year. This is one of the structural weaknesses of the area's economy. These young people are economically active and, as individuals who have been brought...
By Liz Bickerton, Chair of Rural Network Wales In November 2018 a group of individuals and representatives of independent enterprise agencies met in Aberystwyth to share our experience of community led local development in Wales. Our aim was to highlight the potential...
As part of the Eisteddfod AmGen virtual events, Arsyllfa held a series of sessions on the economy in Wales. The second session ‘Defining Language and the Economy / Language Economy using Arfor as a case study’ was broadcast during the Eisteddfod AmGen week. The...
As part of this year's Eisteddfod AmGen events, Arsyllfa held a series of sessions relating to the economy in Wales. The first session ‘From the community up; A new way for market towns' was an opportunity to look at how some Welsh towns had been affected by Covid-19...
Aberystwyth University and the Welsh Local Government Association Rural Forum are working together on a rural recovery plan for Wales that will aim to deliver a new vision for rural Wales in 2030. The work is part of the pan-European ROBUST project, a European project...
For many years, the farming unions, academic experts, and manufacturers have stressed that food security is an issue that needs desperate attention and the last few months of lockdown and social distancing has shone a very bright light on these concerns. Chaired by...
It is incredible to think that there are 5 billion smart phone users in the world, and that on average, they each use 40 exabytes of data each month. And if you don’t know what an exabyte is, for the purposes of this piece, 40 of them times 5 billion, is quite a lot!...
Is digital innovation – a descriptive term for artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), use of big data – a threat or an opportunity for rural areas? Well, the short answer is, ‘it’s both a threat and an opportunity’. The most obvious risk is that...
While it is accepted that digital innovation is a game changer, it remains difficult to define. Professor Phil Brown, chair of the Welsh Government’s Review of Digital Innovation, usefully refers to digital innovation as the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the...
For many of us, this year didn’t quite seem the same without the physical phenomenon of the Royal Welsh Agricultural Show, a calendar highlight in the farming year. But whilst it wasn’t possible to get together with colleagues and friends over an artisan sausage...
