Author: Gavin Kelly, The Observer

To read full article click here

Until the turn of the year, few Americans had much reason to have heard of SeaTac, a small community just outside Seattle. Those aware of the town’s existence knew it as a place that exists to serve the city’s bustling Seattle–Tacoma international airport. But SeaTac is now firmly on the map.

Recent events there have shone a light on the increasingly febrile, high-energy politics of low pay. And they also tell us something about how paralysis in Washington DC is prompting more states, cities and communities to act to improve their prospects.

A generation ago SeaTac was what Americans would call a middle-class town. A jet-fueller or baggage handler could earn a decent living. Those days are gone. These and many other jobs are now paid far less – either at, or just over, the local minimum wage. As David Rolf, the influential vice-president of the Service Employees International Union, and a guiding hand behind events at SeaTac relates: “It’s gone from being comfortable to a poor town, even in a prosperous corner of the US. This story of a whole community being shut out of prosperity is a microcosm of what’s been happening across America.”

It’s a familiar tale and one worthy of a chapter in last year’s spellbinding book The Unwinding by George Packer, which narrates the decline of the great American middle class and the rise of trickle-up poverty. During the 1980s and 1990s, ever more jobs were outsourced from the airlines, benefits were cut back and across the great majority of the airport economy wages were reduced to around the minimum wage. In 2005 one of the big airlines operating at SeaTac fired nearly 500 baggage handlers and hired contractors to replace them. Those who lost their jobs earned around $13 an hour, the new contractors just $9.

More recently there have been repeated union efforts to organise workers, but to no avail. An escalation of traditional forms of protest – marches, rallies, press campaigns – all sought to get the airlines and other employers to lift pay or improve conditions. Again, all failed. “Given the opposition we faced, only a higher level of disruption was going to shift events,” Rolf says.

This disruption came in the form of a petition that easily garnered enough support to force a local referendum on the minimum wage. A coalition of unions, faith and community groups decided to push for a hike in the wage floor in SeaTac from Washington’s minimum wage of just over $9 to $15 (with exemptions for small employers). The campaign was fought by both sides – unions and community groups versus employer bodies – with an intensity normally reserved for a swing state in the runup to a presidential election. Large sums of money were spent (a couple of million dollars) on an electorate of 12,000 voters. “Yes! For SeaTac” – those pushing for the pay rise – knocked on the door of each home an average of four times. Both sides knew the cost of failure would be high.

For a highly local campaign the nature of the argument was surprisingly “big picture”: a battle of competing ideas about the national economy. It was either “middle-out” economics versus “trickle down”, or “free-enterprise” versus “big government”, depending on your political leanings. As Rolf puts it: “We had no idea that we were about to host a national election on fairness and the future of the American economy in our own backyard.”

When the votes were cast last November the Yes! campaign won by a tiny majority of 77 votes and SeaTac became a national story. The vote meant that, starting last month, about 1,600 employees in restaurants, hotels and car-hire agencies received a 60% pay rise. A larger number working inside the airport are awaiting a legal appeal over whether the SeaTac authorities have jurisdiction over the airport premises. It’s too soon to judge, but so far there is little sign that the pay rise has led to major price hikes or job losses.

SeaTac may have caught the public imagination, but in an important respect it is unexceptional. When I ask Rolf if he expects to see other SeaTacs, he responds immediately: “We already are.” An upsurge in civic energy on the charged issue of low pay has resulted in a growing number of mayoral campaigns and popular votes aimed at raising pay. Over the last 15 years there have been 10 state-level referendums on raising the minimum wage. All were won. So far in 2014, 22 minimum wage-related bills have been introduced across 14 states. This is no longer about one or two isolated cases.

One of the things that unite the many diverse local communities that make up contemporary America is the fact that they are governed by a capital that – for now at least – is locked into a pattern of politics that is as adversarial as it is inert. New ideas, political momentum and reforming energy should be celebrated wherever they are found. Right now this means looking away from Washington DC. Whether it is cities such as Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, New York or formerly obscure towns such as SeaTac, these are the places to watch.

Gavin Kelly is chief executive of the UK’s Resolution Foundation thinktank

Author: Bill Best

The REACH radio player launched in December last year by the Community Media Associationin partnership with Exaget Ltd to serve the community radio sector with its very own mobile radio player, helping listeners to stay tuned in to their favourite community radio station wherever they are. Listeners are also able to connect, engage and share through Facebook, Twitter, SMS and email.

The community radio network now stands at more than 200 stations and continues to grow covering almost every nook and cranny of the UK. Collectively this represents a huge network, unique and diverse in its output and just like any other radio group deserved of its own mobile radio player.

As listening via a mobile device continues to grow the community radio sector is able to take control of their mobile listening experience without each station having to go it alone. Community radio stations have always been a means of strong engagement and participation for local listeners and REACH aiming to ‘reach’ out to listeners on the move who not only wish to stay tuned in but also stay in touch. The continued development of REACH will be led by the CMA and the broadcasters to serve the needs of the community radio audience.

REACH is available in the app stores now: IOS and Android

To add your community radio station to the App please click here.

Carnegie Prize for Design and Wellbeing: Opportunity for Community led projects to win £3,500

I am pleased to let you know about the launch of The Carnegie Prize for Design and Wellbeing.

This new Prize, launched on Monday 24th of February, will be awarded in 2014 to four exciting, community-led, townscape projects in Scotland and Northern Ireland. 

The Prize will celebrate the vital role that local communities can play in improving public spaces in towns and brings together the Trust’s core interests in the public realm, towns and community leadership.

Winning projects should demonstrate how good design can create opportunities for improved health, local regeneration, skills development and social interaction.

 £3,500 will go to the overall winner and three runners-up will each receive £2,500. All four projects will be featured as good practice case studies in a Trust publication later this year.

The prizes will be awarded in partnership with the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS) and the Royal Society of Ulster Architects (RSUA) and the winners will be announced at the RIAS convention in Glasgow 16 May 2014.

We are inviting community groups and registered charities in Scotland and Northern Ireland to tell us in 150 words why their project should win the Prize. This process is now open and we are accepting Expressions of Interest from today 24 February until 12 noon on 17 March 2014.  I encourage you to pass on this email on to anyone you think may be interested.

For more information about eligible projects and how to enter please visit our website or get in touch with Jenny Brotchie, Policy Officer jenny@carnegieuk.org.

Author: Donnachadh McCarthy, The Ecologist

21 years ago Donnachadh McCarthy became an active environmental campaigner after spending time with the Yanomami people in the heart of the Amazon forest and seeing first-hand the destruction wreaked there by the ‘civilised’ world.

Since then he has helped local environmental campaigns, turned his home into a carbon negative retro eco-house, become Deputy Chair of the Liberal Democrats, written a regular eco-column for the Independent and worked as an eco-auditor advising businesses and charities.

He spoke to The Ecologist about the collapse of governance in modern day Britain, and his belief that reform is both necessary and achievable.

Millions of people across the planet are carrying out similar actions to me in trying to save the planet’s eco-systems from the mega-disasters bulldozing them into oblivion. But despite all of this massive positive global effort by humanity, the destruction continues. The oceans are getting more acidic, CO2 emissions have broken the catastrophic 400ppm barrier and a wave of human-caused animal and plant extinctions is sweeping the earth.

The 2011 Occupy Movement forced me to stop and think why. The conclusion I reached was that we no longer live in a properly functioning democracy but rather in a ‘prostitute state’ – that is a state that no longer governs for the benefit of the people, but sells it favours to those who can afford to pay. From my personal experiences I developed a thesis that this state has four pillars – a corrupted political system, a prostituted media, a hijacked academia and a criminal tax-haven system.

Our corrupted democracy

The first pillar is the corruption of our democracy, indeed democracies everywhere. As a senior Lib-Dem I got a wide range of eco-friendly and progressive policies adopted by the party-conference. But invariably the corporate lobbyists, who surrounded the party’s leadership, smothered almost every single democratic decision. Reams of the top party echelons are or were corporate lobbyists.

It’s the same in the other major parties. Corporate lobbyists are calling the shots, not we the voters. Take the nuclear industry. Almost every single former Labour Minister for Energy is a lucratively paid nuclear-lobbyist – as was Nick Clegg’s Lib Dem Treasurer at the last General Election.

Despite the public favouring renewable-power over nuclear by huge margins, all three main parties are now committed to pouring billions of our money into poisonous new nuclear white elephants. Huge swathes of government are now under corporate influence including our civil-service, the armed forces and police, the House of Lords and even our regulatory systems.

Our prostituted academia

The second pillar is the prostitution of academia. Our sacred halls of learning – whether primary schools, secondary schools or university research departments – are increasingly being taken over by corporate funding. Even in inner-city Peckham, the local Academy’s teaching policies are now dictated by a Tory Party-donor rather than professional teachers.

The national think-tanks which frequently guide government policy are often propaganda fronts for corporations, whether oil corporations or robber banks. All of the centre or centre-right think-tanks refuse to reveal who is funding them, despite the fact they are quoted in the prostituted media as “independent”. The prostitution of our education system means the potential extinction of any independent thought being taught to our future voting citizens.

The criminal tax-havens

Third, the criminal tax havens. My efforts to clean-up dubious Lib Dem funding by rich-donors, who then received peerages or personal access to the Leader, were opposed by senior Lib-Dems connected to the off-shore tax-haven cartels. I only made the connection after resigning from its Federal Executive over their refusal to halt the corrupt practice of Lib-Dem peers selling political-lobbying services to corporations.

When I then examined fund-raising in the other parties, I realised they were all dependent on massive funding from these appalling tax-havens. Nick Clegg’s Treasurer again was a lobbyist for the truly obscene Cayman Islands. Almost all Tory Treasurers have been linked with tax-havens. So were almost all Labour party millionaire donors during the Blair years.

The UK’s tax-havens are instrumental in shifting the UK tax-burden from corporations to ordinary workers and the creation of our huge public-spending deficit. They are also the route by which the wealth of the poorest nations on earth is funnelled into western banks, leaving a trail of poverty, disease, and environmental destruction in their wake. By funding our democracy they ensure their control on international finance and power.

Our prostituted media

But it is the fourth pillar, the prostituted media, which ensures that all of the above corruption of democracy is carried out without fear of the population rebelling to defend our rights and interests. Five tax-avoiding billionaires control over 80% of UK daily newspapers. 18% of the rest is largely in the hands of international financial corporations, leaving only the Guardian at 2.6% to represent the interests of the non-billionaire section of society.

These five billionaires also own vast swathes of our TV, film and book industries, thus exerting an iron grip on almost everything our culture even thinks about. As long as Murdoch (Sun / Times), Desmond (Express), Rothermere (Mail), the Barclay Brothers (Telegraph) or their ilk monopolise our prostituted media, we will never create the social and environmental justice that so many of us dream and work so hard for.

Thus to summarise: if the rich elites and corporations control the production of thought, the dissemination of thought, the implementation of thought and the funding of thought, then we no longer live in a democracy but under a prostitute state.

What can be done?

The forces ranged against our ecosystems and social justice are immense, but societies have successfully overcome such odds before. The first and simplest thing is for each of us personally to stop feeding the prostitute state and its hangers on. Stop giving it your money. Move your bank accounts, energy supply, newspaper, food buying etc away from the corporate controllers.

Buy local products, install or use green energy, read alternative media, invest ethically and eat organic food from farmers markets. Every penny we remove from the corporate world helps cut the funds for the lobbyists hijacking our democracy.

Personal action is crucial for our own integrity, but it’s not enough. Community action is also vital – join whatever political movement your soul feels drawn to, whether that is Unlock Democracy, the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency, FoE, Greenpeace, the Green Party etc.

A 21st century ‘Great Reform Act’

Most importantly we must call on civic society, from the National Trust to our Trade Unions, from our churches to our credit unions, to urgently call for a 21st Century Great Reform Act – as the people of Britain did in the 19th century, when popular pressure overcame the bloated aristocracy through the Reform Acts.

Under such a Reform Act politicians must be banned from becoming lobbyists; our precious fourth estate cannot be for profit; academia must be educationally free from corporations; and the tax-havens must be closed. We have no time to lose. The global environmental catastrophes and the destruction of social justice are in danger of overwhelming us if we do not act immediately.

And when we do act, make no mistake, the prostituted media, the primary pillar of the prostitute state, will seek to destroy our movement. This is why above all other actions this should be our first target.

With unity, spiritual fortitude and by acting from our hearts we can and we must cleanse the soiled temples of our democracy, and restore them to their true purpose of safeguarding our social and environmental justice.

Yes we can!

Format for Big Vote events

Each event to be facilitated by a member of the Big Vote team.

Each Big Vote event begins with the facilitator outlining the purpose and structure for the event. The principle purpose of each event is to provide those who have yet to decide which way they will vote in the referendum with an opportunity to engage in the debate and to seek answers to questions and concerns that they have in order to help them to make up their minds.  It is not the intention of the Big Vote initiative to provide an opportunity for the supporters of Yes Scotland and Better Together campaigns to debate with each other the relative merits of their respective positions. Representatives of both campaigns will be invited to the event to support the discussions and, at the end of the event, to offer some reflections on what they have heard.

The Big Vote event is based around a referendum card game which has been inspired by So Say Scotland’s Wee Play Game. Players get dealt hands of cards and take it in turn to play them. But instead of playing to win, they are playing to learn and become involved in a conversation about the forthcoming independence referendum.

Guidelines for the game (to be reiterated by the facilitator) :

•             Everyone should be treated with equal respect

•             Everyone’s opinion has value – there is no right or wrong

•             Everyone has a right to be heard

•             Listening is as important as speaking – so work at understanding as well as being understood

•             Try to find common ground – look for where you agree rather than disagree

•             Don’t worry if you are surprised or confused – it might mean that you are learning something new.

Sitting at tables of 6-8 people, the game commences.

The rules of the referendum card game

On each table there will be three packs of cards – each a different colour. The facilitator will ask each table to appoint a ‘dealer’. Representatives of both the Yes Scotland and Better Together campaigns are introduced to the event’s participants and it is explained that during the course of the evening they will be circulating around the tables and will be available to be consulted on any questions players might have.  They may also contribute to the table-based discussions.

Round one  

The dealer deals all the cards in the green pack. Each card in this pack contains a key area of policy or an issue that will be affected in some way by the outcome of the referendum. Every ‘player’ should have at least 5-6 cards in their hand from which they are asked to choose the two which resonate most loudly with them – this may be the issue that the player feels most passionately about or it may be the issue which he/she thinks will be very significant in the run up to the referendum (this may be one in the same thing). Players must choose at least one card from their hand – even if it is not the issue they feel most strongly about. Taking it in turn, the players read out the card they have selected, and, if they wish, say why they chose it. They then place their chosen card on the table face up. Other players can comment or express a view as cards are laid down.  Comments should be brief at this stage. More detailed conversation will take place during Round Four. Go round the players twice so that by the end of this round each player should have placed two cards on the table. Each player should keep both cards in front of them. Remove the cards that weren’t chosen, to avoid mixing them up.

Rounds two and three explore specific statements that might be expected to come from either side of the debate. The dealer should toss a coin as to which pack of cards is dealt first so as to avoid any suspicion of bias.

Round two 

The dealer deals all the cards from the selected (blue or yellow) pack which contains a series of statements which might be made by someone from one or other side of the referendum debate. Repeat the process as above for round one. Players do not necessarily have to agree strongly with the statement – it could just be that he/she feels it is a statement that is going to be important in some way in the debate.

Round three 

The dealer deals all the cards of the remaining pack which contain statements from the other side of the debate. The same process is followed as in the previous two rounds.

Round four 

The players in each group are invited to collectively prioritise which of the ‘issue cards’ played in round 1 would be their top two or three. As part of this discussion, players are also invited to identify other issues/policy areas that have not appeared on the table but which they feel should be considered.

 The players are then asked to create clusters of the remaining cards (from rounds 2 and 3), with the cards in each cluster having a common theme that links them together. The group will usually end up with between three and six clusters. Sometimes, as the discussion proceeds, further themes are identified, and the cards are rearranged into new clusters. There are no right or wrong answers. There may be cards from both sides of the debate in the same cluster.

Use a blank ‘cluster card’ for each cluster. Write on each cluster card a name that describes this cluster’s shared theme. Try to reach agreement among the players which of the themes/clusters that they have been able to identify will be the most significant in the referendum debate.

Round five 

Each table reports to the rest of participants what their key issues and policy areas are (from round one) and what they consider to be most significant cluster/theme from their discussion.

Both sets of campaign representatives (Yes Scotland and Better Together) are then invited to comment/ respond – both to what they have heard at the tables during the course of the evening and during this final reporting back.

After some final comments and thanks from facilitator….. The Event Ends

To download full report click here

The Post Office network has faced significant challenges in recent years, including the decline of the high street and the advent of the internet. Yet the network’s future could be transformed by supporting branches to become more entrepreneurial. It will be essential for branches to experiment with new business models.

The RSA, supported by Post Office Ltd., set out to ask how local Post Offices can do more for their communities while also generating much needed revenue. In the context of a new trend in the UK towards the ‘local’, characterised by a growing microbusiness community and the development of community-based approaches to public service reform, we argue that Post Offices are ideally placed to become ‘Community Enterprise Hubs’ which for instance provide business support to maker communities but also meet the needs of the UK’s ageing population and isolation among older people.

The Post Office has already taken several steps towards supporting Sub-postmasters to engage in entrepreneurial activities – including through a Community Enterprise Fund as well as a £2 billion investment in modernising local branches. But Post Office branches could benefit from learning from the experience of pioneering branches that have already become Community Enterprise Hubs. 

Making the Connection: Local Post Offices as Community Enterprise Hubs recommends that Post Office branches build on their trusted brand and provide a range of new activities, including:

•             Business support to the growing number of home-based businesses and SME’s.

•             Selling local firms’ products and supporting fledgling entrepreneurs

•             Providing access to the internet and digital training courses

•             Advice on affordable finance or changes to welfare, including the introduction of Universal Credit and personal budgets in social care

•             Providing employment and training opportunities to local people

•             Co-hosting public services such as local health centres, running prescription collections services and passing on messages to GPs 

Author: David Ross, The Herald

For 10 years the toll station on the Skye Bridge was the focus and symbol of a campaign that saw hundreds of people arrested and more than 100 convicted for refusing to pay.

But now the station, where campaigners would repeatedly converge to defy the private finance regime that demanded what was claimed to be the highest tolls in Europe, looks likely to have a new life – renting out bikes.

Highland Councillors will be asked tomorrow to consider giving almost £50,000 to a £324, 000 project for environmental and access improvements around the village of Kyle Of Lochalsh and the road to the Skye Bridge.

One of the elements of the Plock Of Kyle Access Road Project is that it would provide facilities, including new cycle tracks, between the Skye Bridge and the Plockton road and link directly to the leisure centre and swimming pool.

The Plock is almost 100 acres on land on the outskirts of the village near the access point to the Skye Bridge. The area fell into disuse some years ago and now much of the land is unmanaged, overgrown, largely inaccessible and unused by most of the community.

Discussions are continuing between the Scottish Government and the Community Trust for the purchase of the former Skye Bridge toll station, with one of the likely uses of this building being as a base for cycle hire.

The project is led by the Hamilton Park Trustees, owners of the Plock, and the Kyle & Lochalsh Community Trust.

The Big Lottery Community Spaces Programme is providing nearly £250,000 to the Project and the Highland Council Planning & Development Service has already committed £15,000. However, the project has a shortfall of £49,404.

If councillors agree to cover this it will mean the local authority will meet almost 20% of the project costs. But the report going to councillors suggests the project is worthy of their additional support, not least because it would contribute to the council’s own Carbon Clever initiative by providing new cycling opportunities in Kyle.

The report says it also aims to bring the community together to improve their environment; open up Kyle’s main land asset to the whole community; and be a catalyst for community development and regeneration.

“While achieving the full potential of the Plock is beyond the scope of the current project, the current works are an essential precursor to any future development, creating the groundwork, developing access and bringing the area back into the life of the community,” the report concludes.

The Skye Bridge opened in October 1995, when the first tolls were charged and refused. In December 2004 the tolls were scrapped by the then Scottish Executive.

That year a round trip cost visitors £11.40 – 14 times the round trip price on the Forth Road Bridge.

One of those who was arrested, charged and convicted for refusing to pay the tolls “without reasonable excuse”, was Skye businessman Cailean Maclean.

He said: “I would certainly support the idea of the toll station becoming a cycle hire outlet. It strikes me as a much more enlightened enterprise than its original purpose. It sounds as though it would make a positive contribution to the area.”

It was not only the islanders who campaigned against the bridge tolls. In the course of the campaign some protesters travelled specifically to not pay the bridge tolls, including Keith Brown, the current Scottish Transport Minister.

The Scottish Executive bought out the contract from Skye Bridge Ltd, the consortium headed by Bank Of America, for £27 million.

The Co-op never meant to bet the farm on the money markets, but now it’s happened there’s a small window of opportunity to keep at least one of the Scottish farms in public/community ownership. At four and a half square miles, Blairgowrie is a good skelp of ground able to produce enough cereal, veg and soft fruit for thousands of people.

Imagine fresh strawberries being delivered to co-operative community food hubs across Scotland: organic wheat supplying half a dozen community bakeries; organic veg pre-ordered for their members by credit unions in Dundee and Perth. Imagine this huge farm being transformed into a ‘Schumacher Centre’ with 20 co-operating, right-size businesses creating opportunities for new entrants in production and processing. Imagine an on-farm education centre hosting daily school visits for Tayside schools

Imagine the £15m price tag being raised through a national community share issue, supplemented by the Scottish Land Fund and European Development Funds.

Who’s up for buying a share?

Investing in Creativity: how art is the new way to enhance Eigg’s economy.

Eigg Box will be a new space for artists to make and do creative work.  The newly built eco workspace on the Isle of Eigg will bring together local island creative businesses with artists from around the world.

Established as a self-sustaining social enterprise, Eigg Box will be a powerhouse of creative activity, entrepreneurship, inspiration and collaboration. However, unlike its urban counterparts, Eigg Box’s eco-built studios and creative workspace will be on the Isle of Eigg; a community-owned, renewably-powered island, off the north-west coast of Scotland with a population of less than 100.

Eigg Box turns on its head the notion that a centre of entrepreneurship and creativity needs to be at the centre of population.

Eigg Box makes the remote central.

The Why?

Other similar (mainland) projects have shown providing high quality, custom built working space increases productivity, reduces isolation, and offers tenants the opportunity to share costs, collaborate and pitch for work jointly. Time spent as a visiting artist-in-residence can motivate, transform and inspire creative practice, and bring new skills and perspective to a local community.

For island-based artists and creative businesses, Eigg Box means somewhere better to work, companionship and creative collaboration and a working environment with fewer distractions and more focus than the kitchen table! Eigg Box also offers the chance to share everything from skills and ideas, to the electricity bill, marketing and training.

For Eigg it means new and more diverse island businesses, providing much needed local employment, helping retain and grow our population and providing community benefit.

For visiting artists, Eigg Box means coming to join a vibrant and supportive group of like-minded creative souls and experience Eigg community life. It offers artists the chance not just to work in a different (and very beautiful) place, but also engage with the Eigg community, with ideas, issues and concepts that are out of their norm and challenge perspectives on what living on an island is all about. At the end of the day, we all live on an island, Eigg is just a bit smaller!

Eigg Box will provide:

Work space for creative businesses in self contained studios, open plan studio spaces or hot desks

You can work in Eigg Box:

•             On a part or full-time basis (Eigg islanders)

•             As visiting artist or creative professional; from a few days up to three months

•             As a day visitor

As well as work space Eigg Box will have:

•             An event or temporary exhibition space

•             An area to relax in, share a coffee and ideas

•             A kitchen

•             An online shop

•             Storage space

•             Wireless broadband access (currently 6Mb, aiming for 50Mb)

•             Regular training and professional development opportunities

•             A meeting room which will include skype & video conferencing facilities

Eigg Box will also run events and training for tenants and in conjunction with local and visiting creative organisations.

Benefits to tenants include:

•             Having appropriate space to work in

•             Less isolation

•             Opportunity to collaborate

•             Opportunity to develop and pitch for work jointly

•             Sharing of costs and resources

•             Promotion and marketing of work

•             Support from Eigg Box manager & fellow tenants

•             Business advice, mentoring and other support

As a visiting artist, the chance to spend time living & working on Eigg, being part of our community with time and space to develop ideas, skills and practice.

Eigg Box aims to contribute to the local economy directly and indirectly by working with and supporting other island businesses:

•             Accommodation providers (hostel, guest houses/B&B & self-catering)

•             Catering & transport providers

•             Other creative service businesses – dance studio & recording studio

•             Community spaces – community hall, primary school, museums

Creativity is now becoming firmly established as an innovative way to sustain our islands’ economy. Let’s have more of it!

This month will see the completion of Sweeney’s Bothy on Eigg,. It is the latest building in the Scotland-wide Bothy Project initiated in 2009 by artists Bobby Niven and Will Foster.

Sweeney’s Bothy is the third in the planned network of small-scale, off-grid art residency spaces in distinct and diverse locations around Scotland.

You can find out more about the processes that led to the whole vision being developed by looking at Sweeney’s Bothy and the blog posts associated with it.

The Bothy warming party on Saturday 15 February will be followed by constant occupation of the space by visiting artists for the next few months as it is fully booked until June! The focus for the residencies will be wilderness ecology, and we are looking forward to some stimulating interaction between the visiting artists, the Green Team and the Earth Connections Centre on Eigg.

THE future of more than 25 jobs in New Pitsligo has been secured following the purchase of John Smith & Sons bakery by the Fraserburgh Development Trust.

The Trust has now completed the acquisition of John Smith &Sons Bakery New Pitsligo Ltd, following the retiral of the present owner John Smith.

The bakery has existed in New Pitsligo since 1903 and the Trust has ensured that the present employees will continue their employment and that the bakery will continue to trade under the name of John Smith and Sons New Pitsligo.

The Trust has been working with John Smith, of John Smith & Sons, to conclude a deal that would mean the bakery would operate as a Social Firm, which means that any surplus generated will go towards building the business and developing future training and employment opportunities.

Chairman of Fraserburgh Development Trust, Ian Watson, commenting on the acquisition, said: “The Trust is delighted that we were able to continue the jobs into the future and the John Smith bakery name and its importance as the biggest employer in New Pitsligo continues. 

“The plan by the Trust is to build for the future in new Pitsligo and to move from the old bakery building to new premises, ideally in the next two years. A site and plans for the new bakery and training facility has been submitted to Aberdeenshire Council for their consideration.”

The Trust have already received development grant funding from the BIG Lottery to carry out an extensive public consultation exercise in the village and for the design team to work on layout and scope  of the proposed new bakery and training centre.

Former owner of the bakery Mr John Smith, who was determined that the business continued to operate in New Pitsligo, said: “Obviously, I have mixed feelings with my having to give up a lifetime’s work, as I am the last of the Smith line involved in this bakery business. However, I am very pleased to know that the business is going to continue and that the jobs will continue in the future. Hopefully, the bakery will be going for another 100 years. 

“Without a doubt, it would have been a disaster for New Pitsligo if the jobs had been lost.”

The news of the acquisition was also welcomed by the Secretary of New Pitsligo Community Council, who said: “New Pitsligo Community Council has discussed, individually and with FDT, the proposals for a new bakery at New Pitsligo.

“The plans to employ existing staff, disadvantaged people and making provision for training young persons will be so advantageous also because New Pitsligo is such a large village we need to have plenty opportunity of employment.

“All members are 100 percent behind the Fraserburgh Development Trust with their vision and plans.”

Social Firms Scotland has been supporting FDT’s acquisition of the John Smith & Sons bakery since 2010 through a mergers and acquisitions programme funded by the Big Lottery. Social Firms Scotland’s CEO, Pauline Graham is delighted that everyone’s efforts have made this a reality.  She said: “We all realised the economic necessity of retaining jobs in the area, in addition to the opportunity to develop an already thriving business and employ more people within a community owned business. 

“There is a good values match between family owned businesses and social firms and we are delighted that the acquisition is now complete.  We wish the new venture every success”.