Economy and Business (Erbysiedh ha Negys)
Green Jobs in Cornwall: Report from the Green Jobs Summit 2021
Collaborators: Joanie Willett, Peter Lefort, Friends of the Earth, Cornwall Wildlife Trust, Cornwall Neighbourhoods for Change, the Green Futures Network.
Key findings:
As we start to move towards a more sustainable economy, green jobs in Cornwall need to be:
- Accessible and equitable for all.
- Supported by skills and training.
- Foster genuine environment benefits.
Affective Assemblages and Local Economies
Project lead: Dr Joanie Willett
Key Findings:
- People haven’t caught up with the changes in their economies so new jobs are either invisible or feel inaccessible.
- There is a really important talent pool that is under-used because of the difficulties that people have accessing information about their localities.
- There are important infrastructural problems that mean that people are not physically able to connect with new opportunities.
- We need to begin looking at regional economies from different starting points, thinking about the experience of people living and working in the region.
- We need to explore and understand the spaces where vital connections are not (yet) being made.
High Street Revival
Lead author: Phoebe Lawlor.
Project coordinators: Dr Joanie Willett and Professor Clare Saunders.
Key Findings:
- The high street is where people naturally meet and feel part of a collective.
- Initiatives such as the US Main Street Programme, 20 Minute Neighborhoods in Australia and repair cafes in Amsterdam and France offer learning opportunities for Cornish high streets.
- Repair cafes, and spaces to share expertise around making, mending, and modifying clothing provide opportunities to bring people on to the high street for the experiences that they offer.
ICS Report: Cornwall’s Post Covid-19 Socio-Economic Recovery
Zachary Collins
Key questions:
- Ensuring innovation is encouraged through a circular economy, providing technological investment in the creative sector that remains within local economies.
- Developing and embracing new measures of success- i.e. average PAYE- in order to get a better eye to detail when analyzing inequalities.
- Being aware of the effects of our stories on Cornwall’s present and future development.
- Inclusive growth by making sure we are better connected to our communities- and the community is better connected to us to aid resilience efforts.
- Facilitating better community engagement using our parish and town councils to share information and address local needs.
Establishing Environmentally and Commercially Sustainable Techniques for Farming Seaweed
Carly Daniels, Ian Ashton, Renewable Engergy, University of Exeter
Key findings:
- Seaweed cultivation is a growth area in sustainable food production but also shows huge potential for combating ocean acidification and providing wider ecosystem services.
- Seaweed is extremely versatile, and can be used in food, biofuels, bioplastics, pharmaceuticals, medicines and even clothing!
- Cornwall is playing a key role in the development of seaweed aquaculture in England.
- This study will gather practical, biological and engineering data to explore how seaweed cultivation can be best achieved in a sustainable way.
Cornwall Marine and Maritime Growth & Innovation Report 2017-18
Ms J Pye, Dr A T Alexander, University of Exeter Business School, Cornwall.
Project Partners: Cornwall Council
Cornwall Marine Network
Key findings:
- Contribution of the Cornish marine sector to the local economy is estimated to be £1.1bn
- The number of active marine businesses identified in the sector has increased since 2008 from an estimated 650 to an estimated 855.
- Levels of innovation and entrepreneurship are also considered to be high.
- Companies also know that they need to diversify to remain competitive
- Demand for suitable and high quality workspace appears to hold back expansion and diversification
- Staffing issues are a concern for companies, many with an ageing workforce; those in more peripheral locations in particular have difficulties in retaining skilled staff due to travel and access issues.
Assessing the Implications for EU Structural Funding Programmes: Why did Cornwall Vote for Brexit?
Joanie Willett, Garry Tregidga, Rebecca Tidy, Phillip Passmore., Institute of Cornish Studies (Politics and Humanities), University of Exeter, Cornwall.
Key findings:
- People felt deeply uncertain and insecure about many of the things that they relied on to make their lives function well (such as public services, housing, access to healthcare).
- In this sense of uncertainty, people felt that the nation state should be able to protect them. When it was unable to make their lives easier, they were then able to say that the UK is under threat from the EU, and felt protective towards the UK.
- People also felt that many funded projects didn’t reflect things that they felt were important and made their lives feel better. We recommend a more participatory approach to development decisions and that structural funding take a broader approach to the types of projects that can be funded.
Challenging Peripheralising Discourses: Connecting New Regional Knowledges.
Joanie Willett, Politics, University of Exeter, Cornwall
Key findings:
- The stories that we tell about our region are really important for how we want to develop our future.
- The stories that we tell about Cornwall are compromised by the fact that people don’t always know how the economy has changed in recent years.
- In Cornwall, one way that we might challenge this would be to make it more clear to people wanting to train and re-train, what skills are needed in the local economy, and where those skills might be gained.
Climate Risks and Opportunities for Agriculture in Cornwall and Isles of Scilly
Alexandra Gardner, Ilya Maclean, Environment and Sustainability Institute
Key findings:
- A key challenge for Cornwall is to increase food production whilst leaving space for nature, in an era of climate change
- This project uses the latest climate models to identify the parts of Cornwall that are most climatically suitable for growing novel crops.
- Growing crops that are well suited to the changing climate may also help to reduce the amount of land required to cultivate in order to make a profit.nologies such as community mobile phone applications might be one way to do this.
Labour as Space: Rhythms of Migrant Mobility in the Cornish Agri-food Industry
Dr Constantine Manolchev (University of Exeter Business School), Dr Celal Cahit Agar (University of St Andrews)
Key findings:
- Migrant workers experience Cornwall and the other locations where they find themselves, through different ‘rhythms’.
- ‘Regulating’ rhythms control the extent to which migrants can participate in local labour markets, and the type of participation.
- ‘Connecting’ rhythms link migrants to their home communities.
- ‘Dressage’ rhythms speed up or slow down their lives, through work or leisure activities.
ExeMPLaR Exeter Centre for Multi-Disciplinary Plastics Research
Peter Hopkinson and Tamara Galloway, University of Exeter Business School.
Key points:
- The hub uses the principles of the circular economy to address the accumulation, impact and costs of plastics in the environment,
- The 18–month programme addresses both the causes of the problems and efforts to solve them,
- This research effort connects technical solutions, human behaviours, social, environmental and economic systems with circular economy principles.
Tevi
Key points:
- Tevi is a unique EU-funded collaboration bringing together expertise from across the University of Exeter (circular economy, engineering, ecology, mathematics, business innovation and product design) alongside that of Cornwall Council (environmental growth, policy and strategy, rewards and recognition), Cornwall Wildlife Trust (habitat management, biodiversity conservation) and Cornwall Development Company (grant funding expertise, programme delivery).
- The aim of Tevi is to help businesses thrive by contributing to Cornwall's environmental growth and transitioning to a circular economy.
The Impact of Tourism Economies on Housing in Cornwall: A Critical Evaluation
In partnership with Cornwall Council (Economic Growth and Development, Housing Strategy and Partnerships)
Michael Ireland, Lucy Ellis, Institute of Cornish Studies.
Key questions:
- How inter-related is the relationship between tourism, the economy of Cornwall, and housing supply and demand?
- Is there a dependency relationship between tourism and host communities; and tourism and the local authority?
- What myths regarding housing supply can we explore and challenge, and what do the existence of these myths tell us?
Circular Economy Tool for Your Business
Tevi
Key points
- Being part of the circular economy is good for the business and good for the environment.
- Contact us to find out how circular your business is, what you can do to improve, and considerations for the future.