Announcing NORTH ATLANTIC FORUM (NAF) 2015

City of Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada: 17-18-19 September 2015

Theme:

Building Communities: New Approaches to Governance, Resilience and Culture as Resources

“The periphery is a place where opposites clash or converge, where creativity and danger are at their most alive” - Kevin MacNeil (2011: xxi)

NAF 2015 invites explorations of how various ‘dark horses’ in the broad North Atlantic – including minorities, small towns, peripheries, aboriginal communities, those with little money, status, voice or political leverage – can rise to the occasion and chart liveable futures.

NAF 2015 will examine opportunities for sustainable living that are more likely to emerge from small and peripheral communities – rural, coastal or island - that would otherwise struggle in a McWorld driven by scale economics.

North Atlantic Forum 2015 will serve as a platform for the critical and inter-disciplinary discussion of experiences where those living ‘on the edge’, however defined, show unexpected ingenuity and mettle; and respond cleverly to dire economic straits or public policy negligence. Including:

• Politically, by developing suitable governance practices; flexing jurisdictional powers; and engaging in multi-level political and (para)-diplomatic relations;

• Economically, by facilitating small-scale entrepreneurship; promoting investment; creating skill-rich jobs; encouraging inward and circular migration; and developing new forms of human-scaled, place-based, no-growth economies, sensitive to environmental needs;

and

·        Culturally, by nourishing strong communities that celebrate traditions and encourage artistic expression; sustaining suitable environmental practices; and welcoming newcomers in their rooted yet routed ways of life.