Introduction

Our story is about a civil society initiative activated by local concern over the steady decline of economic and social opportunity in a ‘remote’ rural area in Northumberland. As with many other parts of the Western world, such areas are on the margins of political attention these days, experiencing youth out-migration, ageing populations and difficulties in sustaining needed services (Shucksmith and Brown, 2016). Social renewal in such areas means searching for pathways towards a sustainable future.

The Glendale Gateway Trust (GGT) has grown from the efforts of committed locals, experimenting with how to do things, into an established part of the governance ecosystem in the county of Northumberland. It started in the mid-1990s, centred on creating a community centre and facilities for young people in Wooler, the main centre in Glendale, North Northumberland. It then grew into providing a platform for a range of activities, which have established a community and business hub, generated improvements to the high street, built a locally significant amount of affordable housing, ensured the survival of the local youth hostel, and created a base for a range of other initiatives and programmes. Infused by a sense of the changing wider context, the GGT has developed an entrepreneurial culture, looking out for opportunities and innovating with new ways of doing things. Over time, the GGT has become a significant actor in local development in Northumberland. As a result, it has increasingly been in a position to grasp available opportunities, both economic and political, drawing down investment from the private, public and charitable sectors.

The initiative was motivated not by a particular driving ideology or a specific local crisis, but by locally widespread perceptions of the ebbing away of an old life and the search for practical ways to both renew community vitality and find a sustainable future for the area. On the one hand, the focus has been on remedying what has disappeared or been neglected; on the other, the GGT has tried to open up new opportunities, such as affordable offices for microbusinesses. It can be seen as helping the Glendale area move beyond the sense of a place ‘left behind’ by agricultural change towards alternatives based on what the area can offer in terms of local amenities and assets, notably, the attraction of the landscape, heritage and sense of community for visitors and in-migrants.