Digital technologies bring to mind the urban dweller connected above and below ground amongst skyscrapers, busy streets, and within cafes, bars and other city spaces. Yet, rural regions can be harbours for innovations in technological changes, and thereby challenge the developing trajectories of them within cities. In this instance, we explored the rural applications of blockchain technologies through a small case study done by Masters of Design students of The Glasgow School of Art at the new Highlands and Islands campus in Forres. The brief for our students’ fourteen-week project tasked them with investigating Novel Digital Geographies and the potential of blockchain technology for social innovation in Scotland’s Cairngorms National Park, directing their attention specifically to questions of ownership and presence. Its outcome being that blockchain can used to communicate and explore identity making in rural contexts. This is important because it goes beyond existing economical uses of blockchain opening up towards new socio-political regional contexts.

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