Rural Routes Podcast was a podcasts series on rural issues I published while working at the Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development at Memorial University of Newfoundland. It asked “What is rural in the 21st century?” The podcast was born out of a conversation with my friend Dr. Ryan Gibson after a Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation conference gathering on PEI. Rebecca Cohoe from Memorial’s Office of Public Engagement who grew up on a rural route named the show and later joined as a co-host and a producer. With the closure of the centre, the university stopped paying the hosting fees and the episodes disappeared from the podcast feed. I was able to salvage all of the episodes with the help of Barry Rooke from the National Community and Campus Radio Association and they are published here as an archive.
What happens when researchers and communities work together to solve problems? It turns out that both come out of the process changed. This episode features Sarah Minnes, a doctoral student at Grenfell Campus of Memorial University of Newfoundland and Craig Pollett, CEO of Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador. They reflect on a community-university collaboration they were both a part of.