Welsh & Appalachian Life after coal

Economy A steelworks
NewsMay 14th, 2013

The Bevan Foundation were proud to welcome visitors from a US-based project which is looking at what happens to people and communities when their pits close.  The After Coal project, based at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, documents individuals’ and communities’ responses to the loss of their main source of employment, income and identity.

In their 2012 visit, the team of Prof Pat Beaver and Dr Tom Hansell interviewed Bevan Foundation director, Victoria Winckler, about community regeneration – you can read extracts from the interview here.  In it, Victoria said “We believe that regeneration, or any sort of change, only happens when people change.  Our people have had a lot of difficulty adjusting to the process of deindustrialization.  A lot of social relationships have been really damaged by that process, both within families but also between neighbors in communities. In Wales there is a widely held belief that the way you get social and economic change is if communities themselves argue for it and campaign for it.  This means regeneration has to be a real bottom up movement.”

The project website also includes photos, video and audio recordings and short articles on the Wales and Appalachia experience.

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