Why did you do it? What was your motivation for developing this project? Market towns such as Ruthin have special significance in Wales. While a fifth of Europe’s population lives in towns of under 10,000, in rural Wales this figure is 44% (2001 Census). The concentration of cities to the coast has left an area of over 1.5 million hectares in central Wales with no towns larger than 20,000 people. Despite the importance of these towns, there has been limited work investigating their current state or future development. Wales’ market towns may be considered as rural capitals and are likely to be affected by many factors are coming to the fore, including climate change and changes in the agricultural industry. This project comes about at a critical time both environmentally and economically and aims to offer new and original ideas – it aims to inform and inspire. The orthodox top-down approach to strategic planning excludes many stakeholders as conventional consultation practices are often perfunctory. Elements of the project are provocative in that they propose change, but this is encouraging debate and encouraging the community to challenge policy-makers to be aware of and find means of dealing with the possible futures that they face.
Logistics How did you recruit your participants? How was it advertised? Through local networks – Town Council and local institutions. These local bodies advertise to their networks of contacts within the town and produced flyers for events that are distributed around the town. The project has been brought to wider public attention through media coverage of the student visit and exhibition, and this will be reviewed in ‘Ruthin: Town and Around,’ the magazine of Ruthin Civic Society. What were the barriers to designing and/or running this activity? The main barrier is the geographical distance between the research team based in Cardiff and the Market Town. We have been able to overcome some of these difficulties through our Beacon funding and through forging personal relationships within the Town Council. Did you carry out any evaluation? If so, how and what were the results? To be undertaken on the completion of the project later this year. What resources were required for the project? To date resources have included staff from Design Research Unit Wales, students from the Welsh School of Architecture, transport and accommodation in the town, exhibition space at Ruthin Craft Centre and presentation materials. These have included A1 display boards, a
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