Fellow's Profile
Ryan Gilmartin
Fellow's Profile
Ryan Gilmartin
How rural areas can rediscover & celebrate what makes them unique
Fellowship
- Themes
- Focus
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Helping rural places rediscover & celebrate what makes them unique by building community-led events
- Countries
- Fellowship year
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2026
- Locality
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East Midlands
Contact
Biography
I am a freelance writer and creative producer from Lincolnshire, creating projects that help people see themselves in the place, and the place in themselves. I am travelling to Austria and Italy to meet the communities behind three rural festivals: Krampusnacht in Tyrol, Artevento Cervia and the Cocullo Snake Festival. Here, the community are the makers and carriers of the tradition - not simply performers for an audience.
Growing up in a place, you often feel like there is nothing unique about where you're from and that your creativity and ambition belong somewhere else. Yet when I left home for drama school, I met people who were fiercely proud of their home towns. That sense of belonging was something I realised many rural communities are losing, especially among young people.
Research shows that rural young people increasingly identify with urban culture. This growing trend brings the risk that young people will lose a rural identity and a decline in community participation and pride. No place deserves cut-and-paste events, so by researching these unique rural festivals I'm hoping to unpick what they do differently and bring that information back home.
Disclaimer
All Reports are copyright © the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. The views and opinions expressed by any Fellow are those of the Fellow and not of the Churchill Fellowship or its partners, which have no responsibility or liability for any part of them.
Disclaimer
All Reports are copyright © the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. The views and opinions expressed by any Fellow are those of the Fellow and not of the Churchill Fellowship or its partners, which have no responsibility or liability for any part of them.
