Rufopoly is a participatory learning board game enabling players to undertake a journey through a fictitious rural urban fringe called RUFshire, answering questions and making decisions on development challenges and place-making; those answers then inform each player's vision for RUFshire. The encountered questions are determined by the roll of a die and based on primary data collected for a Relu project (2010-2012) about Managing Environmental Change at the Rural Urban Fringe. Rufopoly has been used extensively in early stages of projects and plans such as the pioneering Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership spatial plan and has been used by government, EU project groups, local authorities, business, community groups, universities and schools. It has exposed audiences to issues associated with the delivery and trade-offs associated with planning and environmental issues at the fringe but crucially without the use of complex jargon. We believe that the full potential and impact of Rufopoly has yet to be fully realised. There are several reasons for this: 1. Rufopoly was developed towards the end of our Relu project as an unplanned output for a conference run by Relu in 2011 on 'Who Should run the Countryside?'. Its success prompted its inclusion as an output. 2. There were insufficient funds for it to be successfully tested and integrated with policy and practice communities to maximise its utility as a learning tool as this was never the original intention of the project. 3. It is currently presented as a one size fits all board game of a hypothetical place. More time is needed to explore the potential of Rufopoly to become a generic platform for stakeholders wishing to develop their own versions of the tool to meet their own needs and to fill a widely recognised gap in the effectiveness of participatory tools for improved decsion making. This knowledge exchange project addresses these deficiencies by drawing together the shared knowledge and previous experiences of designers and users of Rufopoly. This informs a series of interactive workshops in Wales, England and Scotland to identify how this kind of game-format can be enhanced into a more effective and multifunctional tool. This will help extend and embed the impact for a range of policy and practice partners in the form of a Rufopoly Resource Kit. By working collaboratively with end users we can identify how Rufopoly can be reconfigured across different user groups and organisations in tune with their agendas and needs. There are four stages to this project: WP1: Review and learn lessons from previous Rufopoly experiences. This involves (1) an assessment of the actual results and findings from past games that were written up and the results analysed. (2) critical assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of Rufopoly from facilitators and core participants. We will draw priamirly from our UK experiences but are also able to secure insights from the international adaptations of Rufopoly from Nebraska (November 2013) and Sweden (2014). WP2: Conduct a series of interactive workshops with different policy and practice audiences. These workshops will be held in England, Scotland and Wales using members of the research team and other participants. The purpose of these workshops is to (1) share results of WP1; (2) assess how the tool could be reconfigured to address the principla needs and challenges facing participants; and (3) prioritise feasible options for a Rufopoly Resource Kit. WP3: Using WP1 and WP2 outcomes, we will design and trial (across our team) the Rufopoly 'Mk2' resource kit and associated materials/guidance. WP4: Launch the Rufopoly Resource Kit and guidance in a live streamed global workshop event. This would; reveal the basic resource kit as co-designed by the team and enable testers of the resource kit to share their experiences maximising knowledge exchange and its range of potential applications.

Green Infrastructure (GI) is the network of natural, semi-natural and managed green spaces and water features that provide benefits for people and wildlife. This includes woodlands, parks, gardens, playing fields, street trees, grass verges, green roofs, rivers, ponds, wetlands and sustainable urban drainage systems. GI offers a range of benefits, including flood protection, carbon storage, cooling, filtering of air and water pollution, space for recreation, and habitat for biodiversity. There is a wealth of academic research into the benefits of GI and a wide range of assessment tools have been developed by researchers, but many of these tools are not suitable for wider use, and there is no comprehensive guidance to help users choose and apply the best tools to meet their needs. This poses a problem for local planners, who face the challenge of developing effective networks of GI as budgets fall and demand for land for housing and infrastructure grows. This project is driven by the needs of Cherwell District Council, who are responsible for planning GI in Bicester. The town is set to double in size over the next 20 years, which will place pressure on existing GI - already being lost to infill development - but provides opportunities to create large areas of high-quality GI within the new developments, which include the UK's first eco-town in NW Bicester. The council needs tools to help them plan how to link existing GI with the new GI and the wider countryside, creating connected networks for wildlife and people, and how to ensure that the GI network delivers a wide range of benefits in the areas where they are most needed. The University of Oxford is therefore working with Forest Research to compile a toolbox of existing methods that can be used to plan and evaluate GI, and develop clear step-by-step guidance to help users select and apply the best tools to meet their needs. The tools and guidance will allow users to map and assess existing GI, identify opportunities for adding new GI or enhancing existing GI, and evaluate the benefits of these investments. We will work with local planners to apply this approach to developing a GI Plan for Bicester, and we will test the tools and guidance with potential future users in other local authorities to ensure that it can be applied more widely. By enabling planners, developers and green space managers to assess the impact of new developments on GI, and identify well-targeted cost-effective options for improving the GI network, we expect our project to have a significant impact in Bicester and beyond. Improved planning can maximise the benefits delivered by each area of GI and by the network as a whole. Valuation of the benefits delivered by GI can help to make the business case for investment, allowing more GI improvements to be delivered on the ground. A high quality network of well-designed GI can transform an area into a more attractive place to live, work and invest. As well as improving the health, wellbeing and quality of life of residents, this can boost jobs and economic development by creating new commercial opportunities in maintaining GI or running associated businesses (cafés, outdoor exercise classes etc). GI can also provide the most cost-effective way of adapting to climate change impacts by providing flood protection, shading and cooling. It can also provide opportunities for social engagement, local food production and educational activities, as well as protecting biodiversity. Keywords: Green infrastructure; ecosystem services; biodiversity; spatial planning; valuation; connectivity. Stakeholders: Cherwell District Council; Bioregional; Oxfordshire County Council; Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership; Bicester Town Council; Wild Oxfordshire; BBOWT (wildlife trust); A2Dominion (Bicester eco-town developer); Ecosystems Knowledge Network; Green Infrastructure Partnership; Environment Agency; South Downs National Park Authority; Mersey Forest.

The project addresses the practical problems of how to undertake robust social cost benefit analysis (CBA) for Culture and heritage capital (CHC) and how to apply and adapt accounting principles for sustainable management of CHC. CHC and Natural capital (NC) are intermingled across the English landscape. Existing approaches for valuing natural capital from the environmental economics literature likely subsume the value of CHC service flows and may compromise policy efficiency by mischaracterizing trade-offs involved in managing natural or CHC. The underlying objective of the project is to 1) Develop CHC valuation methods to be readily applied across a range of assets, and 2) To disentangle assets and services produced and co-produced by CHC and other assets such as NC. The principal output will be an overarching framework for practitioners that will help articulate values and guide decision making. The framework will provide a basis that data and insights from future research can be added to. Our work will develop methodologies and guidance for CHC decision-making and outline the normative criteria for sustainability in terms of these methodologies. Addressing these research problems is essential to improving the joint management of CHC and NC by our partners, realising public benefit, and ensuring socially responsible and people-centred approaches to land management. We will reconcile methodologies currently deployed in existing accounts of CHC flows with those developed and deployed for natural capital (NC) (Bateman et al, 2013;2016). Further, we utilise the infrastructure and connections of National Trust (NT) and Forestry England (FE) to design and implement innovative experimental valuation techniques for separating values, for example for NC and CHC flows, and for physical verses digital CHC assets. This will provide a robust and novel expansion of monetary estimates for CHC value flows. In recognition of the urgent need for such approaches to support responses to increasing pressures for land use change, development, climate adaptation and other drivers this approach will ensure immediate impact on practice with findings reported to policy makers (DCMS, Defra and their public bodies) as the work unfolds. Early deliverables to support sector understanding and application of CHC will include publishing introductory guidance, valuation and accounting methodologies guidance and metrics for monitoring and demonstrating benefit flows and change. To support the sector wide adoption of metrics and enable CHC to be made visible and integrated into existing decision support tools, data layers for baseline CHC will be developed and made publicly available. Subsequent deliverables include new value estimates from our experiments, illustrative case study based CHC accounts, technical guidance, and the dissemination of outputs through conferences, webinars, briefing notes for practitioners and journal publications.

Not needed for this application

Fallow deer are an icon of the British landscape and an important part of the island's bio-cultural heritage. They are native to the Mediterranean but, over the last 2,000 years, have been repeatedly introduced to Britain. They are now more numerous than at any point in the past and are overgrazing landscapes and prohibiting woodland regeneration, to the detriment of their population's welfare and broader biodiversity. Deer culling is contested but is currently the only viable population management strategy. Deer stalkers are in decline due to lack of training and because younger generations have a negative perception of deer culling. Indeed, fear of negative publicity is a concern for deer management organisations, which further suppresses discourse on the subject. The cultural distaste for deer culling and venison consumption is exemplified by the National Food Strategy, which regards wild animals as outside of human consumption. For this reason, most wild venison is discarded or exported at a low price. By contrast supermarket venison is expensive and generally sourced from deer farms located as far away as New Zealand. Both the government-funded Deer Initiative (1995-2020) and DEFRA's 2022 consultation on deer management stressed that wild venison is affordable, healthy, high-welfare, sustainable and a by-product of necessary deer culling. Yet this messaging has not connected with the general public. Our AHRC-funded project Dama International generated the missing narrative to contextualise fallow deer management and present it in an engaging and palatable way. It demonstrated that modern fallow deer descend from populations established ~1000 AD as part of a medieval hunting culture. The species was hunted primarily by women and deer carcasses were ritually butchered, or 'unmade', and venison redistributed throughout society to facilitate community cohesion. To protect venison supplies, fallow deer were managed in parks and top predators (bears and wolves) were eradicated. Gradually, hunting and venison fell out of fashion, fallow deer escaped from parks and, in the absence of top predators their populations burgeoned. In essence the modern fallow deer problem is a legacy of the medieval period. Fair Game will use Sussex as a proof-of-concept region to demonstrate how Dama International's research can provide solutions to the intractable problems of deer management. We will do this by resuscitating medieval-style approaches to fallow deer hunting, carcass processing and venison redistribution by: Fostering a more diverse demographic for deer stalkers by providing deer management and game hygiene courses, aimed at younger people and women. Establishing communal infrastructure for the storage and supply of venison carcasses Creating a new 'Virtuous Venison' brand for redistribution via the food charity FareShare. Providing an engaging communication strategy (animated film and pop-up exhibitions) that explains the history of fallow deer, the need to cull them and the societal benefits of their venison. Fair Game is not only timely given the biodiversity crisis, cost of living crisis and rising demand for food banks but is justifiable on ethical and environmental grounds. We believe Fair Game will transform public understanding and ultimately the sector's approach to deer management.