Rural development practitioners are at the front line of facilitating prosperous rural communities, places, and environments across Ontario. Ensuring rural development practitioners have access to the most up to date knowledge it critical to facilitating decision-making on the future of rural places.

Leading rural development organizations, community innovators, elected officials, students, and researchers gathered at the North Atlantic Forum in Letterfrack, Ireland from June 17-21, 2024, to share new rural development knowledge. The North Atlantic Forum was established as “collegial assembly” to further public policy, regional development, place-based development and expanding the importance of identity and cultural development. Further information about the 2024 North Atlantic Forum can be found at http://northatlanticforum.org/about-conference/.

To facilitate knowledge sharing in rural Ontario a series of research summaries are being created by graduate students on innovative approaches to sustainable rural livelihoods. Knowledge shared from the conference will focus on the themes of economic development, food security, heritage conservation, housing, policy proofing and lenses, and solar power. The summaries will be available in August 2024 from http://ruraldev.ca/connecting-international-research-to-rural-ontario-communities-and-practitioners/. Stay tuned for more information.

The 2024 North Atlantic Forum was supported in Canada by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance, a collaboration between the Government of Ontario and the University of Guelph.