ABSTRACT

This chapter takes key case studies and examines both process and product of community involvement, in some examples over a period of thirty years. It considers the various roles of countryside services in delivering education and training, community engagement, and related support. The countryside, ecology, and education teams in Sheffield actively used these various approaches to promote community involvement in countryside issues. The possibility of linking the rural land management to urban communities and education, and of match-funding the farm tenancy incomes with, for example, European funding, ended before it began. The mutually supportive roles of community engagement, adult education, and countryside management are frequently overlooked or forgotten. The assessment of value of knowledge contributions then placed them in the context of the deliverables of human capital and the investment in that capital. As noted for the work of the RSPB in the Dearne Valley, the value and even financial worth of environmental education provision can be assessed or calculated.