A small Herefordshire market town on the Welsh border is set to prove technology is its passport to the future, through a project funded by Apple Computer UK, British Telecommunications Plc, the Department of Trade & Industry and the Rural Development Commission. The year-long scheme is called Connected Community and offers technology as the antidote to typical problems in rural towns, such as isolation and the decline of traditional agrarian industries. The aim is to enable Kington to remain intact and grow through drawing on an under-used potential workforce, such as women and the disabled, as well as marketing its own resources beyond the local area. Research group The Henley Centre will monitor progress and produce a report in September, 1994. Apple is providing around 40 personal computers and peripherals on permanent loan, with training from Basingstoke reseller the Rothwell Group Plc and Claris Corp software, while BT will supply ISDN lines and communications kit, subject to Office of Telecommunications approval. The joint Apple-BT contribution is UKP250,000, padded with a further UKP50,000 each from the Industry Department and the Rural Development Commission. Apple funded a similar venture in Jacksonville, Oregon several years ago, but this is a more ambitious project. Kington fought off bids from Alford, Lincolnshire and Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire to win and, on the evidence of its nine representatives who came to the presentation yesterday, it is hungry for change. Kington’s population is 2,200, but it draws on a catchment area of 5,500. Its main industries are agriculture, clothing and building, together with a fair helping of crafts people who arrived on the hippy trail 200 years ago. The town is setting up a company to administer who gets what, but local schools, currently under threat of closure, will benefit from remote teaching, where one teacher can tutor pupils in different sites simultaneously. Although there was little interest in using computers before this initiative and its tempting UKP350,000 package arose, representative of the settlement Miles Swinburne is enthusiastic: This will raise the heartbeat of our town.
