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This article develops understanding of cultural and digital capital in order to evaluate the contribution of creative practitioners to rural community resilience. Online practices today impact on creative work in rural locales in a number of ways. However, exactly how they extend 'reach' and contribute to rural creativity deserves greater attention. We examine how broadband Internet access and online practices impact on rural creative work and, in turn, how this enables creatives to participate at different levels in their rural communities, thus contributing to research into both rural community resilience and rural creative economies by providing in-depth qualitative analysis. Through interviews undertaken in rural Scotland, the article outlines the implications of poor rural Internet connectivity for creative economies and explores the impact of this on the role of creatives in their rural communities and their 'community-focused' creative activities. Our findings suggest creative practitioners are using digital technologies and adaptive approaches to overcome barriers to connectivity and to remain in rural locations. Creatives are invested in their communities and their rurality on a number of levels, contributing to community resilience through building cultural capital in diverse ways, and to 'ripple effects' from online activities.

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This paper explores how an evaluative framework of resilience might be utilised to assess the impact of new digital technologies. This paper outlines key themes and indicators from recent literature on community-level and rural resilience and incorporates insights from work on digital inclusion and rural information and communication technologies to build a framework of rural community resilience. It then highlights a successful case study carried out by the Digital Engagement and Resilience project and describes some of the methodological challenges that can be encountered in cross-cutting evaluative work in a digital economy context. Finally, it contextualises this work in the current policy climate of rural digital agendas to stress the growing need for holistic and critical approaches to 'resilience'.

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