Today on CAN we bring you a report from "Creative Rural Industries," a conference at the University of Lancaster, England, September 10-13, 2006. The meeting was in tune with the "rural renaissance" sweeping across Europe as a major EU funding initiative, Leader +, helps spark a regeneration movement in stressed agricultural areas and villages. The conference was organized by Littoral, a Northern nonprofit arts trust, as part of its effort to address the overwhelming crisis for life on the English farm in the wake of recent livestock epidemics. This "agri-cultural" gathering brought together artists, craftspeople and artisans; farmers, growers and local rural authorities; cultural and arts agents; social service and government agents; Leader + program officers; and specialists in the "creative industries," clusters of entrepreneurs poised to reinvent the country the way they reinvented the city in the 1990s. This report includes an extensive hyperlinked networking list. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham