SHARED ASSETS LIMITED

Their core work

Shared Assets is a London-based consultancy specialising in community land ownership, commons management, and access to land for new entrants into farming. Their work sits at the intersection of ecological economics and practical community development — they help rural communities and aspiring farmers navigate land access barriers, build resilient local food systems, and develop collaborative governance models for shared natural resources. In EU research projects they contribute practitioner knowledge on community empowerment, social-ecological transformation, and the real-world mechanisms of land tenure reform. They are one of very few private firms in Europe that combine commons theory with on-the-ground rural innovation practice.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their earliest H2020 engagement (RECOMS, 2018) was grounded in broad community resilience theory — ecological economics, social-ecological place-based thinking, vulnerability, and transformation frameworks. By their second project (RURALIZATION, 2019) the focus had sharpened considerably toward concrete policy and practice: access to land, new entrants into farming, rural newcomers, and rural innovation. The trajectory is clear: from theoretical resilience frameworks toward applied land access mechanisms and rural regeneration policy, suggesting the organisation is maturing from research partner to specialist practitioner voice in EU rural policy debates.

Shared Assets is moving steadily toward applied rural land policy — future collaborations are most likely to involve land tenure reform, agri-food system entry barriers, and community-based farm ownership models rather than broad resilience research.

How they like to work

Shared Assets has never led an H2020 project — they entered both projects as partner or third party, contributing specialist knowledge rather than coordinating research. Despite only two projects, they accumulated 33 distinct consortium partners across 13 countries, which means they joined large, multi-partner networks rather than tight bilateral arrangements. This pattern is typical of practitioner organisations that add real-world credibility and stakeholder access to academic-led consortia — they are brought in for what they know and who they reach, not to manage budgets or work packages.

33 unique consortium partners across 13 countries from just two projects indicates they were embedded in substantial pan-European consortia; RURALIZATION in particular was a large RIA with wide geographic spread. There is no evidence of repeat partnerships — their network is broad rather than deep.

What sets them apart

Shared Assets occupies a genuinely rare niche: a private SME with practitioner expertise in community land ownership and commons governance — a topic that most H2020 consortia can only access through academic theory. They bring direct knowledge of how land access actually works for rural newcomers and community groups in the UK and beyond, which is invaluable for projects that need to bridge research findings to real policy and practice. For a consortium working on rural renewal, food system resilience, or land tenure, they offer the kind of grounded, non-academic voice that strengthens both the methodology and the impact case.

Highlights from their portfolio

• RURALIZATION
  Their only directly funded H2020 project (EUR 130,902), addressing the generational renewal crisis in European agriculture through land access reform — a high-policy-relevance topic that attracted a large, geographically diverse consortium.
• RECOMS
  An MSCA Innovative Training Network, meaning Shared Assets contributed to training early-stage researchers in community resilience and social-ecological transformation — an unusual role for a small private consultancy.