Rural entrepreneurship in Wales

Introduction

This course considers the issues that are important when starting up or running a small business in a rural environment.

Traditional business models apply to running a business in any location. This course will introduce you to some concepts that will help you work out what you want to do with your business idea. It will also ask you to consider the impact of living in a rural location on your business and to consider what is important to you.

Here are some characters who will be with us throughout the course. Each has a different proposal for which the rural context poses particular challenges.

Euan works on his family’s farm and wants to develop more income by diversifying outside of traditional farming activities.

Gwyneth is a keen cook and has had her hours reduced at the café where she works in town. To supplement her family income, she wants to sell her homemade jams, chutneys and preserves at farmers’ markets and food fairs.

Julia, a Further Education student, lives with her family in a remote area where the Post Office and village store are threatened with closure. She needs to engage in a team enterprise activity as part of her Welsh Baccalaureate qualification and has been inspired by enterprise events and lectures attended at college. With the support of staff at the Post Office, she wants to lead local residents in a bid to take over the Post Office and store and run them as a community shop.

Dafydd is a sheep farmer who, together with his wife Ffion, works off farm to supplement the farming income. He wants to diversify into the holiday let business by turning three redundant barns into eco-friendly self-catering accommodation.

Gwenllian is a language teacher living in a fairly remote area of mid-Wales where access to learning is difficult (long distances, poor public transport and inflexible timetables). She has identified a need for language-based CPD and translation services among local businesses involved in exporting their products to mainland Europe.

Whatever your motivation for tackling this course of study, it will take you on a journey looking at the challenges posed when you live in a rural environment and start you thinking about how you can use this knowledge to run a successful business of your choice.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course Q91 Business Management [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .