Author: LPL

City of Edinburgh Council this quarter rubberstamped a £120,000 revamp of Dalmeny Street Park after more than 500 people flocked to a community festival organised by Friends of Dalmeny Street Park (FDSP). Visitors to Parklife’s third annual gala weekend on May 31st and June 1st at the park – a centrepiece of this year’s Leith Festival – gave an overwhelmingly positive response when canvassed about the proposed improvements.

“It was like old times at Dalmeny Park with large numbers of the community having their memories rekindled of how it used to be. The FDSP vision is now becoming clearer after the success of the festival. The potential to grow the FDSP Festival is huge and could easily become a vital annual community gathering looked forward to by many,” confirms Pilmeny Youth Centre Manager and FDSP committee member Bryan Maughan. Now city planners are sitting up and taking notice of plans to overhaul the ageing sports and play facilities.

In the wake of the successful gala weekend, a June 20th council meeting gave the greenlight to a £50,000 upgrade to sports facilities in the park. That’s on top of £70,000 already earmarked for a new children’s play area. Last year, the Parklife project won £30,000 worth of council improvements to the park.

The event featured gardening, a basketball tournament, five-a-side football competition, poets’ corner, live music, sculpture and a dog show in a bid to raise the profile of the project which aims to regenerate this previously neglected public greenspace. Membership of FDSP rocketed to over 100 after the festival. FDSP Treasurer Lise Bratton comments, “Having done the last two annual events, I’m blown away by the increased numbers participating and developing new initiatives.” And in news that underscores the project’s dynamism, FDSP scooped an £1,000 O2 It’s Your Community award to create a nursery garden.

Author: Sarah Longlands

Britain is suffering political disengagement and a general malaise of its representative democracy – and it is against this background that the Department for Communities and Local Government published last week’s empowerment white paper, which sets out the government’s plans to pass “more and more power to more and more people, using every practical means possible”. The paper has clear implications for a wide range of government departments, which the DCLG will need to win over to its agenda if it is to realise its ambitions.

The paper identifies “empowerment” as the key driver for change, suggesting a broadening and strengthening of systems of participatory democracy in order to address the more fundamental failings in our democratic system. Set on the foundation provided by An Action Plan for Community Empowerment: Building on Success, the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 and Making Assets Work: The Quirk Review, it represents an ambitious attempt by central government to provide strong leadership on empowerment; its chosen tools form a pot pourri of ideas around civic duty and citizen involvement, supported by a number of diverse mechanisms.

The document’s very diversity hints at one of its main weaknesses: that its legislative purpose is relatively unclear. Its ‘scattergun’ approach involves presenting a collection of the DCLG’s best ideas, and setting out its aspirations for further discussion and development in partnership with other departments and agencies. But the lack of a clear focus means that the document risks failing to actively direct other departments towards addressing this important agenda.

In addition, the paper fails to provide enough ‘glue’ to secure a cross-departmental consensus on how to strengthen empowerment. It does provide a useful summary of the progress made in other departments to address the empowerment agenda, including coverage of the new systems of accountability within the NHS, the emerging ‘Policing Pledge’, and work within the Departments of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and of Work and Pensions. However, it does not set out how other departments’ work on these issues will boost their contribution to public service agreement targets or wider public sector reform. Consequently, empowerment could be interpreted as a minority interest whose traction doesn’t extend beyond the DCLG’s portfolio.

The shortage of clear arguments to encourage other departments to buy into the agenda looks stranger still because several departments have been bringing out their own blueprints for empowerment. These include the Department for International Development’s report, Champions of Participation: Engaging Citizens in Local Governance, which is strong on the need for cross-departmental ‘linking and learning’, and the Ministry of Justice discussion paper, A National Framework for Greater Citizen Engagement, which advocates the use of citizens’ summits, citizens’ juries and petitions.

In terms of addressing the state of the democratic system in the UK, the white paper presents a tantalising overview along with some interesting ideas. However, unfortunately it fails to fully address some of the tensions or questions that underpin this debate. Perhaps the document also tries to do too much in knitting together a bundle of different agendas: those of community assets, for example, with those concerning the balance between central and local control, and between representative and participatory democracy.

The white paper assumes that strengthening the mechanics of participatory democracy will encourage an equivalent reinforcement of representative democracy. However, this relationship is by no means a given, and even some of the paper’s own proposals contradict the assumption. Indeed, the paper explicitly backs the idea of city mayors: powerful, centralising, executive figures who do not necessarily foster greater community involvement in local governance. In our opinion, broad and resilient democracies are not well founded on the visions and aspirations of any one man or woman.

The paper is also in danger of trivialising representative democracy through some of its proposals for incentivising electoral turnout, which include the introduction of prize draws and ‘I’ve voted’ badges.

The white paper places a strong emphasis on encouraging the transfer of properties to community organisations, directly supporting such asset transfers through the new Empowerment Fund. This is very welcome, and could provide important resources to enable community-led organisations to play a greater role in their local areas. However, it also makes an implicit assumption which equates the development of ‘community anchor’ organisations with social enterprises: businesses whose main aims are primarily social or environmental. The fact is that community anchors are often more focused on voluntary sector work such as campaigning for social justice and equality or speaking up for the needs of local communities. While many mobilise collective action and contribute to a sense of community identity – thereby playing a wide role in the empowerment agenda – they do not necessarily undertake the service-delivery and asset-management functions often taken up by social enterprises.

As a last point, the white paper contains passages in which the DCLG seems keen to address accusations of over-centralisation and express its desire to ‘pass power’ directly to citizens. However, we believe that caution must be exercised in increasing citizens’ control over local authorities, which are after all democratically elected bodies. Certainly, there need to be more opportunities for citizens to participate in discussion and debate about the shape of places in the future – but this should not come at the cost of undermining local authorities.

This white paper is welcome for the strong focus it places on community empowerment and its guiding principle of shifting power to communities and citizens. It also contains the sensible acknowledgment that there are fundamental issues that undermine the health of our civil society in the UK, such as continued deprivation, voter apathy, centralisation and a lack of interest in civic roles within our communities. However, while it provides potential solutions to tackle some of these fundamental issues, the paper requires a much stronger focus and greater cross-departmental support in order to realise a true shifting of power to local communities.

Empowerment white paper: the key points

• Local authorities should be given a new duty to promote democracy, complementing the duty to involve people in decision-making introduced in the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007. Seen as an attempt to build on the work being done already at a local government level to promote democratic understanding and participation, the policy suggests providing local people with better information; developing the use of new media; improving youth participation in local democracy; and even rewarding voters with an ‘I’ve voted’ sticker at the ballot box.

• The duty to involve people in decision-making should be extended to cover additional agencies and bodies across England, including regional development agencies, Job Centre Plus, the forthcoming Homes and Communities Agency, probation services and youth offending teams. However, there is a lack of clarity about how
the government expects this to be done.

• A new £70m ‘Community-Builders’ fund is being launched to enable ‘community anchor’ organisations to improve their ability to run local facilities, deliver services, and be run as ‘economically viable social enterprises’.

• A £7.5m ‘Empowerment Fund’ will provide support for existing national Third Sector organisations operating across England. The fund will focus on national organisations that ‘help local communities turn key proposals into practical action on the ground’. A consultation is being launched alongside the white paper, with a commitment to launch the fund in late 2008.

• A new Asset Transfer Unit (ATU) will build on the work of the Advancing Assets for Communities Programme, which was led by voluntary sector alliance the Development Trust Association. The ATU will develop demonstration projects around community asset transfer, and lead a campaign with local authorities and community groups to increase the number of transfers.

• A new Social Enterprise Unit will champion the role of social enterprise models in areas such as housing, health and regeneration. The Cabinet Office also has its own social enterprise unit, but the proposed relationship between the two is not clear from the white paper.

Author: Rob Links

We live in an oil-dependent world, and have got to this level of dependency in a very short space of time, using vast reserves of oil in the process – without planning for when the supply is not so plentiful. Most of us avoid thinking about what happens when oil runs out (or becomes prohibitively expensive), but The Transition Handbook shows how the inevitable and profound changes ahead can have a positive outcome. These changes can lead to the rebirth of local communities, which will grow more of their own food, generate their own power, and build their own houses using local materials. They can also encourage the development of local currencies, to keep money in the local area.

See more here including info on where to buy http://transitionculture.org/shop/the-transition-handbook

Author: Stephen Maxwell

AMIDST the media headlines on the government’s Green Paper proposals to reform the benefits system the philosophy underlying the reforms is easy to overlook. Shorn of tabloid sensationalism the intention of the proposals is straightforward enough and in the context of previous reforms evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Since the introduction of the New Deal successive Labour Governments have required people in receipt of unemployment benefits to meet progressively more qualifying requirements. This progression has been matched by an increasing emphasis on personalised plans and support for people to move back into work. With the help of a growing economy this combination succeeded in moving one million people off out of work benefits, halving the number of unemployed claimants and saving the Treasury £5bn annually.

The government’s latest proposals take the process a step further. The longer people depend on Jobseekers’ Allowance the more stringent the requirements imposed on them in return for the increased support. After one year on the Allowance a requirement for four weeks community work will be imposed. After two years on JSA the requirement to carry out some form of agreed work will be extended. The prospect, never fully spelled out, is that those who fail to find work after two years will be required to work permanently on make work schemes or lose their benefit.

The change proposed for the 2.6m people on Incapacity Benefit is more radical. From October 2008 IB will be replaced by an Employment and Support Allowance. All recipients of IB will be expected to undergo a new Work Capability Test focused on their potential for paid employment. The WCT will divide people into two groups, a Work Related Activity Group and a Support Group. Those in the Work Related Group will be required to follow a programme designed to get them back into work with the carrot of personalised support but backed by a threat ofiosing entitlement to benefit if they do not cooperate. Those in the support group will be encouraged to volunteer for a work related programme but like those assessed as incapable of working will (eventually) be entitled to a higher rate of income support.

Some changes are proposed in how these back to work services will be delivered. Individuals will be given a right to request control of their support budget. And private and voluntary sector providers of the services will be given an open right to bid for contracts and under an enhanced system of payment by out- comes will retain a proportion of the public budget for their client.

There are some purely practical questions to ask about these proposals, not least whether the success claimed for the New Deal can be repeated for a more intractable client group in far less favourable economic circumstances and which professional if not an individual’s GP is best qualified to assess capacity to work. But there are also questions of underlying philosophy exposed in part by the Green Paper itself.

With its constant reiteration of rights being matched by imposed responsibilities the paper confirms the govemment’s fixation with a ‘contract’ model of society. But a contract model not only risks marginalising people who are chronically disadvantaged but is hard to reconcile with the growing inequalities of globalising market economies.

The paper grandly proclaims that “our objective is a social revolution: an 80 per cent employment rate -the highest ever”, as if paid employment whatever its quality or content must be superior, for the individual and for society, to a life focused on home, family and community. No less surprising is the confidence with which employment is presented as the answer to child poverty in the face of the fact that nearly half the children living in poverty in the UK live in house-holds in which at least one of the adults is in work. There is no doubt that these proposals are fashionable but are they truly timely?

Author: LPL

SWAP the streets for Elgin Youth Café is the message to young people and you will have fun, make new friends and learn new skills.

A new-look youth support team is looking to build on the success of the project for 12-18-year-olds.

At a time when under-age drinking, vandalism and anti-social behaviour grab much of the headlines when it comes to discussing young people, the youth café is determined to enhance a positive image of young people.

Based in Francis Place, the project has done much since it opened seven years ago to give young people alternative activities and opportunities.

That is a key plank in the Scottish Government’s proposals for tackling under-age drinking.

And the youth café is set to offer even more opportunities for young people following the appointment of two new youth workers.

Simon Bowen is the new senior youth worker while Sue Watcshan is co-ordinator of the Delta Force community action team.

They are supported by trainee youth worker ¬Peter Mutch, who has come through the ranks of the youth café which he first started attending at the age of 11, and founder member and part-time youth worker Jaclyn Lunan. They also have a dedicated team of volunteers who help staff the centre.

“It is a brilliant project which is run primarily by the young people themselves,” said Mr Bowen. “We are just there to steer them in the right direction.

“We are all enthusiastic about the future. We have a good team here and are moving in the same direction.”

His initial aim is to encourage more young ¬people to use the youth café and take advantage of a wide range of activities on offer. In the longer-term – funding has been secured for an initial two-year period with the hope more can be found to extend this to at least three years – he would like to see the café become a centre of learning where young people, many of whom do not like the formal school environment, can gain a range of lifeskills and qualifications.

An important development will be the reintroduction of Friday night opening when the schools go back after the holidays. That is seen as a key night in getting young people off the streets when they might become involved in drinking and anti-social behaviour.

“It might be a case of ¬doing some outreach work, going around Elgin and talking to young people on a Friday, letting them know they have an alternative to sitting in the dark having a sly little swig,” he said.

The youth café staff have a close relationship with the local community police officers and the return of Friday night opening would be welcomed by them.

The ethos of the meeting place is to give the young people responsibility for running the place, from managing the bar (soft drinks only), utilising the kitchen and operating their own youth committee.

That was a path followed by Peter Mutch (17), who is currently on a nine month placement as a trainee youth worker, funded by the Rank film organisation.

“I started coming at 11, as soon as I left primary school. I started working behind the bar, was then bar manager, entertainments co-ordinator and was chairman of the youth committee, ‘Divas and Heroes’, for three years,” he said.

He enjoyed the experience so much he has joined the youth work team and hopes to be kept on full-time beyond his initial placement.

Sue Watcshan is the other new member of the team as the currently part-time co-ordinator of the Delta Force – a team of young people who go out into the community and get involved in projects and events.

That can range from cleaning graffiti and gardening to helping out at ¬coffee mornings and running a pancake stall at the recent Rotary Motorfun.

The project was piloted a number of years ago but has been running permanently for over a year, and has proved very successful.

The aim is to promote and develop relationships with all parts of the community, particularly older people, where the perception of young people may not always be a positive one.

“This is really valuable to the community and we are going to have a really busy year,” said Ms Watcshan.

“We need community groups to contact us if they need any help. Any young person out there interested in getting involved can pop into the café or give us a call.”

Fiona Birse, chairman of the youth café, is excited by the early work of the new team.

“They have come up with some bright new ideas and the café is very vibrant. The kids are really getting on well with them,” she said.

While funding has been secured to keep the youth team in place over the next couple of years, Fiona ¬admitted it remains a struggle to run the café, which costs over £100,000 a year to run.

“We have very little in the way of commercial sponsorship. It would be great if we could develop those links. If 50 big firms gave us £1,000 a year that would be half our running costs,” she added.

Aside from a range of ¬activities in the café, including pool, TV, chill out area, Internet access, café diner, other outside activities have included gorge walking, sailing and climbing.

A summer timetable kicked off with a Hawaiian night and will conclude with a Pirates of the Caribbean prom evening next month.

During the summer holidays the café is open 1-4pm on Tuesday and Wednesday, 1-5pm on a Friday and also 7-9.30pm on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evening.

http://www.elginyouthcafe.org

Author: Big Issue Scotland

Regeneration trusts and building preservation trusts have found it difficult to access National Lottery funding because they don’t have full ownership of the buildings they want to develop. But Glasgow City Council has decided to transfer derelict properties to local groups with a sound business plan in order to unlock millions of pounds worth of grants.
It comes as a major boost to Maryhill Burgh Halls Trust, which has been rejected for Big Lottery funding twice because the group didn’t have full ownership of the landmark listed building. The group now hope to begin work before the end of the year in transforming the old Halls into a £9million community events and concert space, nursery, café-restaurant, and recording studio. Trust co-ordinator Hunter Reid told the Big Issue: “It’s very, very good news because it’s absolutely vital we get Big Lottery funding to carry on with the project. It’s very forward-thinking of the council. If you can get support from local people, then groups like ours can be more responsive to what the community are looking for than the council can be.”

Other trusts that want to buy-up buildings currently owned by Glasgow City Council include the those pushing for the refurbishment of Sir John Maxwell School, Elder Park Farmhouse, Dalmarnock Primary School and Govanhill Baths. Nominal sale fees would be returned to each group by the council if they have Big lottery and European regional development Fund grants lined up.

Ann McCleary, of the Glasgow Building Preservation Trust, welcomed a move that could benefit a number of her own projects across the city. “We have so many fantastic historic buildings in Glasgow that are so important to the fabric of the city. Renovation projects can be pivotal in regenerating whole communities. It’s a lot of responsibility to run something over the long-term, but if there’s a real appetite among a strong community nucleus, this is a great way of accessing funds and getting real local ownership.”

Possil Renewal Ltd, a regeneration charity in North Glasgow looking to maintain their decrepit Ardoch House building, is also set to reap the benefit of the council’s policy change. “We would probably have to shut up shop in a couple of years if it wasn’t for this way of getting lottery money,” said manager John Duncanson. “We create vital jobs and services in the area, so it’s forward thinking of the council to realise we need more direct control.”

Fatima Uygun, director of Govanhill Baths Trust, also supports community transfer as a way of reaching the £8.5m target needed to reopen the Calder Street baths with a café and creche, but warned that the city council must continue to support the running of leisure services once refurbishment was achieved. “We welcome the decision to help give us ownership, but we still see the council as our partners,” she said.

Councillors hope the move will redress the imbalance in Big Lottery funding in Scotland, since Glasgow currently receives less than its proportional share of money (it has received 11% the Big Lottery’s Investing in Communities fund). “We want to help alleviate the tight financial situation that many of these groups find themselves in; releasing vacant properties for local regeneration projects will also bring them back into productive use while empowering local communities to refurbish and develop them to suit their needs,” said councillor George Ryan, head of development of regeneration.

Author: LPL

The Big Tent, Scotland’s Festival of Stewardship fuses a top quality music, arts and traditional crafts festival, with cutting edge debates, eco shopping, an organic food village and a gathering place for a host of organisations involved in safeguarding the future of the planet.
Big Tent 2008 hosts eight new visitor zones, places to learn, shop, eat and play whilst getting active about recycling, biodiversity, climate change and creating a healthier and greener home for your family. The whole family can relax and enjoy a fun filled and extra special weekend packed with diverse entertainment featuring top international circus act The Chipolatas and African theatre group Grassroots Zimbabwe among many others.

Younger children will enjoy the Children’s Zone with a host of games, adventures and activities. There are creative writing classes and poetry to enjoy as well as traditional skills workshops to try. The new Body and Soul Zone in the Palace Orchard offers a place to relax and enjoy aromatherapy, massage, therapeutic and alternative treatments. Our powerful debate programme brings together leading activists, authors and experts involved at the forefront of climate change solutions with inspiring sessions on food, energy and movement building. Savour seasonal food for breakfast, lunch and dinner in our Food Village organised by top chef and writer Christopher Trotter. Sample the delights of the Black Isle Brewery in the organic beer tent. Round
off each evening sublimely as the sun sets over this idyllic setting, enjoying ‘The Big Hullabaloo’ concerts, headlined by King Creosote and the Fence Collective on Saturday.

Festival Tickets Adult weekend £14, Adult day £8, Concession weekend £10, Concession day £6, Under 12s FREE Tickets available on line at www.bigtentfestival.co.uk

Author: Chik Collins, newstart

Lately there has been some interesting debate about community development and empowerment. It’s by no means a new discussion, but it remains very important.

Briefly, in the late 1960s and 1970s the idea of community development came to the fore -promoting the emergence of independent and assertive community organisations which could get their voices heeded in the corridors of power.

But from the late 1980s this increasingly gave way to the idea of communities working in partnership with politicians and agencies. This was the new ‘approved’ route to empowerment. Community action gave way to community engagement.

The partnership model has always, from the community development perspective, looked at best highly sanguine about the realities of power, and there is much to suggest that in practice this has indeed been the case. Experienced, independent community organisations have come to view many of the purveyors of empowerment and engagement like the way they might view someone called Herod as a purveyor of child care.

Such an organisation is Clydebank Independent Resource Centre (Circ). Its title is relatively new, but the organisation has been around for the best part of four decades. It was previously Clydebank Unemployed Community Resource Centre (1992-2006). Prior to that it was ClydebankUnemployed Workers Centre (1981-1990), and earlier still Clydebank Unemployed Action Group (1971-1981).

I first visited the centre at the end of 2006, to participate in a community conference on poverty in the west of Scotland. I got to know a bit about its history, its solid community roots, its capacity to defend its independence, and the myriad ways it has worked to address community needs over the years.

I was taken aback, not just by the centre’s endurance and achievements, but also by the fact that I hadn’t heard more about it previously. In Scotland, and I suspect more widely, the transition from ‘community development’ to ‘partnership’ and ’empowerment’ has seen very many other community organisations fall by the wayside. But here was an organisation which had proved able to defend its independence and purpose over many years. Consequently it had been able to continue to serve its community -providing education and training, creche facilities, a hugely successful welfare rights and money advice service, social and recreational activities, facilitating local campaigns and much more. It had been able to do this on very limited budgets, and in the kinds of social and political circumstances which had seen other organisations lose their independence, get co-opted to the agendas of others, and quite often get killed off altogether.

Fortunately, Oxfam Scotland felt the story of the centre could make a really important contribution to its aim of supporting genuinely community-based responses to poverty in Scotland. I was lucky enough to get the job of writing that story. It sets out the scale of the centre’s achievements over the years.

Succeeding while others fail

Reflecting on those achievements, one cannot help but note the contrast with the failures of regeneration in the town -and in Scotland more generally -over the same period.

On the one hand, a wee community-led organisation, with just a few staff and its volunteers, and a dogged commitment to the needs of its people. It sets realistic goals and then, in the words of one notable commentator, achieves ‘beyond all reasonable expectation’. But it repeatedly has to fight for its basic existence.

And on the other hand, a parade of high profile. high budget, multi-agency initiatives which promise much more but continually fail to come close to delivering.

So, in Clydebank there was the enterprise zone of the 1980s. Then there was the smaller urban regeneration initiative in the early 1990s, followed by the priority partnership area (PPA) in the mid-1990s, which in turn gave way to the social inclusion partnership (SIP) at the end of that decade.

All very conspicuously failed.

The enterprise zone had the temerity to chase the centre out of its business park -because the centre damaged its image! But its carefully (and expensively) presented image didn’t deliver the ‘economic revitalisation’ -or jobs -it had promised for Clydebank. Meanwhile, the centre worked against the odds to preserve the fabric of community life as the town’s economic base collapsed.

The priority partnership areas, as part of the continuation of the New Life for Urban Scotland programme, promised a ‘renaissance’ for Scotland’s poorest communities. But by the time they were created it was already clear that the New Life programme was failing very badly in its pre- existing, and massively resourced, flagship areas.

As the rather less well-resourced PPA was failing in Clydebank, the centre was delivering badly needed services, and campaigning on vital issues such as the introduction of jobseeker’s allowance and the disempowerment of local government.

And New Labour’s SIPs simply continued the partnership agenda inherited from the Conservatives. Shortly the Scottish Executive’s own research would be criticising them ferociously for their failure to deliver. But by then the only surprise was that anyone found that surprising. Had they really expected the SIPs to deliver regeneration? But as the Clydebank SIP was failing, the centre was gaining national recognition for the breadth and depth of its achievements on its own comparatively minuscule budget.

Today Clydebank has a community planning partnership and an urban regeneration company, which are, unfortunately, no more likely to succeed in delivering for the poorest communities than their predecessors. They reflect the kind of thinking about partnerships and enterprise which has failed so conspicuously in the past. Quite why anyone would expect different outcomes this time is, at least as far as ordinary rationality is concerned, a mystery.

Key lessons

How, then, has the centre has been able to maintain its independence, so as to be able to continue to serve its community over so many years? The key seems to be its roots in, and continuing relationship to, the trade union movement. The organisation was created in the first instance by the local trades union council, and the latter has retained a key role since. So across the years the centre has been able to benefit from the understanding and experience of people who have been active trade unionists and shop stewards. In turn that understanding and experience has become part of the culture of the centre, which has been transmitted to its staff and its volunteers.

The result is that the centre never became dependent on development workers employed by others. It has developed its own workers, who have absorbed and carried forward the spirit, aims and purpose of their organisation. And at vital moments, when hostile forces have gathered, the Scottish TUC has, very much indeed to its credit, stepped up to defend it.

This brings us back to the discussion of community development and empowerment. The centre, unlike many other organisations, has not travelled the path from the former to the latter -with all of the negative implications associated. In fact, it seems never to have become as dependent on community development support as many other organisations.

The significance of this is that in many cases it was the organisations which were so dependent that could be led from development to empowerment -as the political and policy landscape mutated from the mid-late 1980s. And this observation poses a significant challenge for proponents of community development today. How are organisations developed by other bodies, which inevitably have their own agendas, to preserve their independent existence over the long haul?

And this is perhaps the key lesson of the centre’s story. It offers an alternative model- one which has been shown to meet the above challenge. Clydebank is not unique, and what has been achieved there can be mirrored in other towns and cities. And this would seem to require a renewal of the kind of positive, mutual relationship between the trades unions and local communities which was in the past an almost defining aspect of the trade union movement in Scotland -but was, and to some extent still is, also in evidence in many other towns and cities in Britain.

If this relationship can be renewed and strengthened in other towns and cities it will be to the mutual benefit of local communities and trade union members. For it is not just local communities that find themselves challenged by poverty and regeneration. Trade unionists are increasingly aware that behind the cloak of regeneration there often lies an agenda for privatisation, ‘flexible’ labour markets and service cuts. And in Scotland at least the unions are increasingly aware that working together, local communities and trade unionists will be more likely to be able to stand up against that challenge.

Those who are in regeneration because they genuinely want to see communities exercising some power over their own lives and futures will welcome that. Others might not.

Author: LPL

The Orkney island community of Eday celebrated the opening of The Eday Heritage and Visitor Centre on Saturday, 5 July. Many years in the planning, the project came to fruition through the work of the community-led Eday Partnership, working closely with the Eday Heritage Association. Funding has come from a number of grant givers including HIE Orkney, the Russell Trust, Orkney Islands Council and the Heritage Lottery Fund. What was the island’s former Baptist Church and a derelict building, is now fully restored and houses a heritage display area, a permanent archive, a café and a tourist information point. The Eday Oral History Project is also housed within in the centre – an exciting 2-year project working with the primary school and with volunteers interviewing local people to gather memories and records of life on the island in the past.

Activities on the day included a guided walk with the Eday Ranger – the Eday Partnership and neighbouring island Sanday’s Development Trust are two of the few community groups in Scotland to employ countryside rangers, both part-funded by Scottish Natural Heritage.
Eday is situated amongst the North Isles of Orkney, which in turn lie of the north coast of Scotland. It is roughly 8 miles long and 3 miles wide and has around 131 residents. The Island relies mainly on farming and has a community Co-op and post office, several B&Bs, self-catering accommodation and a recently refurbished community-run hostel. Eday is centrally located for tourism and there is a tremendous scope for development for islanders, local industry and tourism – the heritage centre is among a number of projects to attract people to visit the island and to enhance the quality of life for all resident there.

Author: LPL

On July 4, a vibrant concert celebrated the end of a week-long summer school, the culmination of the first phase of an extraordinary musical project in the Orkney island of Sanday. The main aim of project is to set up a music-teacher training programme, but also to provide additional music tuition in the school and throughout the community.

The project arose from a crisis when key members of the Sanday Fiddle Club left the island, leaving the group a bit rudderless, but with a membership (numbering around 30 and ranging in age from 7 to 60 plus) keen to carry on. After conversations with all concerned and a bit of help from resident composer, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, a four-way partnership between Sanday Development Trust, Sanday Fiddle Club, Sanday Community School and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) developed and the wheels were set in motion.

For the past nine months, two musicians from RSAMD have been tutoring the Fiddle Club, a traditional youth band in the school, and individuals during the course of two-day residential visits. This foundation year is in preparation for the main project, which has the potential to give every child on the island, and many adults too, the opportunity to learn a musical instrument. The programme allows classical and traditional music to run in parallel, and at the end of it the next phase, all being well, at least 5 islanders will have a post graduate teaching qualification in music. Thereafter, those teachers will help to roll out a similar programme with a school in Malawi that Sanday Community School has ongoing links with.

The first phase of the Sanday Music Project has been part funded by Awards for All, the Scottish and Southern Spurness Windfarm Community Benefit Fund, and private donations.