Conceptualising animation in rural communities: the Village SOS Case

Gerard McElwee, Robert Smith, Peter Somerville

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    36 Citations (Scopus)
    147 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    This paper introduces and discusses the concept of animatorship in relation to rural enterprise and development. At its simplest level, animatorship is the art of animating others to achieve their objectives. We develop and apply this concept to understanding community development and community enterprise, with a specific emphasis on rural communities. We present a descriptive, conceptual study of a new concept i.e. animation in the context of entrepreneurship. The fieldwork for this paper took the form of structured face-to-face interviews with community development workers in November-January 2015/2016. These workers actively stimulate, motivate and inspire others and orchestrate situations and people to bring about change through others, not merely doing things for them. They build environments and relationships in which people grow, directing and focusing energies to develop and empower people’s emotional and social lives and relationships through patient, open listening and group conversation.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1-26
    Number of pages26
    JournalEntrepreneurship & Regional Development
    Early online date27 Nov 2017
    DOIs
    Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 27 Nov 2017

    Keywords

    • animation
    • animatorship
    • rural development
    • depleted communities
    • villages

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