Author: LPL

The project was originally set up to address the lack of good quality and safe play areas for children and young people in the East End of Glasgow. However, in response to local need and the desire of local parents to improve this, Playbusters has developed over the last five years since its establishment.

Playbusters is managed by a voluntary Board of Directors consisting of parents from five areas in the East End. The committee have undergone extensive training and this has resulted in publishing of a business plan.

The staff team is comprised of one Project Manager, a part time Support Officer, Sessional Staff, Easy Spanish Tutors and Volunteers.

In addition a small budget is available to buy in some other expert support as and when required. The staff and Board of Directors are highly motivated individuals with the aim of making their community the ‘best it can be’ We continually carry out consultations with the community and use this to develop our service delivery.

Intergenerational Project

This project has been going on for over a year and is being enjoyed by both young people and elderly groups involved. The children are from primary 7 at St Marks and Quarrybrae and elderly people mainly from Pensioners Action Group. So far, we have carried out audio and video workshops, had joint visits to Scotland Street Museum and Peoples Palace. We are now working with young people in Parkhead and Shettleston and the older people in a number of workshops including the use of mobile phones, playing sports together with the Nintendo Wii and we have trying out karaoke together – it has been a lot of FUN! We are currently planning visits for both groups together to the Peoples Palace .we will also be carrying out work in partnership with Parkhead Housing Association working on an environmental programme involving both age groups.
Further work between the generations is being carried out with the “Happy Feet Line Dancers” who are helping out with our club activities at whiterose community centre for 5/12 year olds. We have a strong commitment to bring the generations together through a variety of fun and educational activities.

Playbusters are involved in various projects to meet the needs of different age groups. These have been developed with parents, community groups and other agencies.

Easy Spanish Playbusters takes pride in promoting family learning. We now also provide Primary children and parents/carers sessions in addition to our Primary Spanish Clubs. As our club sessions, these classes are full of fun and adults are encouraged to actively participate in all the class activities. Including our flamenco workshops!
Activate: This is a community development programme aimed at volunteers and community activists in the East End. It offers real opportunities for further education and employment.

Pre fives: We continue to develop services for pre fives and do so through co-ordinated play sessions and support to groups. For further information follow the link at the top of this page.

www.playbusters.org.uk

Author: SFHA

There is innate strength and stability within the housing association sector which can be shared with other partners in the broader social economy.

Housing associations have a wealth of experience, knowledge and business assets to offer partners in the social enterprise sector and there is a clear role for housing associations supporting both existing and emerging new social enterprises.

• taking on a community anchor role – strengthening the social enterprise sector via partnerships for Wider Role, incubating new social enterprises
• being creative contractors – increasing their contracting with social enterprises
• being trusted intermediaries, helping develop the sector by sharing their knowledge, experience and skills.

Download pdf here www.senscot.net/docs/HousingAssociationsandtheSocialEnterpriseSector.pdf

Author: COSLA

We are delighted that for the first time in Scotland, central and local government are making an explicit joint commitment to helping local people to play their full part in making Scotland flourish.

For the Scottish Government and COSLA empowering communities is not jargon, it is a key element of what we are both about. This is an agenda we share with colleagues from across the public, voluntary and community sectors.

A key element of our joint commitment is to be clear about what community empowerment is and why it matters.

We see community empowerment as a process where people work together to make change happen in their communities by having more power and influence over what matters to them. We also each believe in the central representative role of councillors in invigorating local democracy, and we see the process of community empowerment as a key way of complementing this.

In getting to this point we have listened to a wide range of people and we have responded to what we heard. So we are seeking to provide strategic leadership. We are not launching new short term initiatives and we will celebrate the vibrant work that is already being done across the country.

To support this high level commitment, we will also develop an Action Plan in partnership with the community and voluntary sectors over the coming months. Based on feedback we have received to date the broad outline of that plan will cover:

• Highlighting examples of community empowerment;

• Providing direct capacity building investment to community groups;

• Investing in an integrated programme to develop skills, learning and networking in relation to community empowerment and engagement;

• Developing support to help communities own assets;

• Investing in improved support for community capacity building;

• Working with Audit Scotland to agree how to assess progress on empowerment.

Today’s joint commitment is a starting point for a long term journey, and we look forward to continuing to work together and with communities as it develops.

Author: James Henderson (Social Researcher)

James Henderson meets DTAS’s Angus Hardie to find out more about the realities of this ‘community-led’ stuff

You know the kind of feel-good movie where the community wins through? Whether it’s the main plot or sub-plot, either way, they finally, after multiple humiliations, find the strength to unite behind their leader, stick together and in some way face down the bullies: the Magnificent Seven, Brassed Off, Erin Brokovitch come to mind but there’s plenty more. And as we watch we too have become committed to the cause, we see it through, we feel powerful and proud, almost heroic: all is right with the world because community is what’s right with the world.

It’s usually next day that alarm bells start ringing. I mean am I really the sort of person to hold out to the bitter end and come good? There’s family and holidays and mortgages to consider, and maybe I don’t quite care enough. Frankly, either community seems a little too good to be true, or I’m not up to the job … or both.

Not surprising then, with folk like me around, that the natural approach to developing communities these days is very much the public and private sectors taking the lead building and running local services whether schools, leisure, transport or shops. Let the big guys take the strain, the glory and the profit: communities can take a backseat, give their views and let the good times roll … or, alternatively, fight a valiant and time-consuming rearguard action against yet another development plan that doesn’t quite get to the heart of what matters to local people: a golf course, a conference centre, more private housing to pay for the social housing, or a shopping mall, perhaps.

There’s a question nagging at me: what is it that communities can realistically do for themselves? I google and find the Development Trust Association Scotland: strapline, the community-led regeneration network. Sounds promising, and I’m off to the unlikely setting of Edinburgh’s West End, amidst blue-chip companies and agencies, past the daunting towers of the Episcopal Cathedral, to locate the Trust’s basement office and its Director, Angus Hardie, eager in the short time available – he’s off to a national regeneration meeting – to get their message across:

“Community-led regeneration, it’s become empty rhetoric in the heart of municipal Scotland where councils run the cities. It’s a very different story in much of rural Scotland. If you were to go to the Highlands and Islands you have a situation where communities are leading regeneration and a public sector that supports it – Highland and Islands Enterprise and the Councils. It’s a silent revolution.”

Okay, so here at least communities have some control but to what extent?

“The Island of Gigha is in a sense where it’s taken to its logical conclusion. Before an absentee landlord and feudal system but now under community ownership it has turned itself around. The population’s growing, businesses are coming, there are wind turbines.”

And this is a model for urban areas too?

“Yes, for instance, we were talking recently with a housing cooperative in Craigmillar. They’ve got an asset-base, good reserves, are addressing wider needs and this could develop further. The community housing movement, rather than the bigger housing associations, could be the giants of community regeneration. They are starting to get there but they could go so much further.”

We talk about other projects in Glasgow but I can’t help wondering is this for real or more like one of those gooey soft-centre movies with the sickly sweet after taste? Can community organisations manage themselves with budgets stretching into millions? I want to believe in it, that this is a different way of doing things, of communities with real strengths and strong voices, but …

Angus has done the thinking: “There’s no doubt that there is a big issue about capacity and skills. But that is no excuse for the attitude of some council officers who are simply dismissive of the idea that that local people could ever manage anything let alone take control of public assets. The review in England commissioned by Department of Communities and Local Government and led by Barry Quirk found that there are no substantive barriers to asset transfer. There are risks – as in everything – but these can be minimised and the recognised benefits outweigh the risks. Quirk concluded that the barriers are more about organisational culture and mindset in local authorities, particularly those of middle management council officers and some councillors.”

“Years ago I worked in Wester Hailes, we had a very open democratic and transparent set of structures and the community got noticed. What we didn’t have was community assets and that was our mistake. Now the place is a shadow of its former self: quite sad really. The council is firmly back in control. If a community has assets and its own income then it has a chance of being able to do things for themselves. Seems to me Wester Hailes is a case of what might have been. The community were certainly up for it: literally thousands of local people were involved in one way or another – there was such a buzz.”

And so in the end, it’s all about politics: who has the power and resources, and who’s prepared to work to get it. And who is prepared to work for it?

“DTA Scotland is part of the campaign for strong and independent communities, Local People Leading, and we’re building-up a base of support across the sector – community woodlands, community transport, community retail, community energy. That could be 700 community organisations, quite a powerful constituency. And there has been a huge political shift across local authorities : Labour only controls 2 councils now and over 50% of councillors are new to their role . As for the new national administration, they tend to see the third sector as having the potential to make a more significant contribution to the wider economy. While that is part of the agenda I don’t see that as the primary purpose of our work. It is about building more connected and stronger communities where local people are more involved in the issues which affect their day to day lives.”

And if this community coalition can find its way, what’s possible?

“This is about long term change. We need some stability and a bit more of a vision about how things should be, perhaps in ten to fifteen years time. The new Scottish Government seems to be making the right noises. I’m optimistic, but no one should think this is going to be easy.”

A voice calls from the deep, “10 to 11, Angus … your train”, and he’s away to Dundee to make the case once more.

As for me, I’m left, well, sort of encouraged … but, hey, ‘ten to fifteen years’, ‘stability’, ‘making the right noises’. This is not feeling like a great night out at the movies, more gritty realism …

I’ve been missing the point: there’s no glorious journey around some grand crusade that gets the blood-flowing. This is the day-to-day commitment of people in their communities inching their way through the minefields of funding, politics and prejudice to prove beyond reasonable doubt that, despite the inevitable ups and downs, they can do the job as well as anyone else … or better. No sentimental endings, no dramatic failures, just the politics of change.

I sit back on the bus and looking out the window start to day-dream. Part of me, somehow won’t rest up: I can’t help feeling there’s a great film buried in here somewhere, surely. Maybe it’s the now distant buzz of Wester Hailes chasing me, stinging my imagination into looking for a scriptwriter’s ending. I mean, what if there was some serious cash behind this, it could be the makings of a real old barnstorming epic of a movie, couldn’t it?

James Henderson is a social researcher who has worked on participatory research into community care, inclusion, health and well-being, community learning and place-making.

Author: Housing and Regeneration Directorate

‘Community Empowerment’ is now located within Scottish Governments Regeneration team. But ‘localism’ is located within the Third Sector team. Other teams (like Rural Affairs) also speak of ‘empowerment’. It`s still a bit confusing. Here’s a ‘map’ of the Housing and Regeneration Directorate.

Download structure chart here

Author: LPL

Wellhouse Community Trust (WCT) is ready to open the doors on their 3rd community facility – ‘hubSports’ a 4-court games hall will deliver over 15 different sports activities on a weekly basis and compliment the Trusts youth facility (Innerzone) and employment/training facility (the hub) that have been operational for the past 4 years.

The Trust along with Wellhouse Housing Association (WHA) have a determined and driven approach to the improvement of the area and with the commitment of local people the residents are empowered through physical, social and economic regeneration.

Previously run by Glasgow City Council the hubSports (previously named Wellhouse Central) building was flooded and then partly fire damaged and then lay as an eyesore to the area for over 5 years. Only 200 yards from ‘the hub’ a new state of the art building owned by WHA and managed by WCT, hubSports was the next target for both organisations to tackle.

After local community consultation and working groups the plans were drawn up and set into motion. High on the agenda is sustainability for this building by installing geo-thermal systems for heating and a wind-turbine for electricity. hubSports is an environmentally friendly, income generation model that not only supports the improvement of health & wellbeing of residents but any surpluses go back into the other services and activities of the Trust such as drop-in youth nights and elderly social activities.

Pauline Smith, Manager of the Trust said, “All activities of the Trust rely on the ownership of each and every one being taken by the community – the staff are the support mechanisms, the community are the driving force but there is a passion and dedication from both to keep moving forward. hubSports will compliment the services and activities available within ‘the hub’ and ‘innerzone’ and provide even more opportunities for local jobs, training, diversionary activities and physical activity for all the community.

We don’t own the building yet but inline with LPL beliefs we will be tackling the Council on this issue – at the cost of approx £980k to refurbish surely the community should own the building? Wish us luck!”

Pauline Smith, Manager, Wellhouse Community Trust
e-mail: psmith@wellhousect.org.uk

Author: New Start

I feel like someone with rourette’s wanting to shout out ‘community development’ all the time.

Why? Because it seems to have become so unfashionable as to be unmentionable.

If only someone would declare community development dead, then we could have a wake. At least that would clear the way for a proper overhaul of empowerment theory, for which community development has been a torchbearer for a generation.

But no signs of this as we prepare for the empowerment white paper.

Only words such as involvement, localism, participation, civicness, responsiveness and citizenship are in.

Plus of course empowerment, which since Ed Cox became top adviser to Hazel Blears has been elevated to the number one DCLG word to sprinkle liberally over government announcements.

Personally, I can’t see an empowerment revolution rooted in the

23 proposals mooted in the community empowerment action plan.

I don’t want to sound cynical, though, as the empowerment agenda is most welcome. While cornmunity development has for many years made a big contribution to the thinking and practice of government, that just adds to the argument that, as a well-developed theory, it needs reinvigorating to take things even further forward.

Here in Blackburn with Darwen this shift began several years ago when the former community development service became the neighbourhood engagement service. Since then it has developed the policies and structures to operate more effectively at a neighbourhood level. We’ve found our tentative trial of participatory budgeting so useful that this year there is now a substantial mainstream pot to roll it out further. We’ve experimented

with new ways to engage, such as encouraging local participation from the thousands who contact our call centre, effectively moving from responsiveness to inclusive problem solving with citizens.

Local events have been organised entitled ‘neighbourhood voices’, directly gathering raw comments from people and then tracking these into actions within area plans and outcomes within the local area agreement. We’ve recognised that there is a strong link between developing skills and employment opportunities and developing civic participation generally, and have merged the neighbourhood engagement and lifelong learning services to meet this complementary agenda.

On this last area of worklessness and empowerment there may be a clue as to why community development has fallen from favour.

Community development enshrined rights, independence and the need for a sophisticated awareness of power. Toby Blume from Urban Forum politely described conflicts between this philosophy and that of the new empowerment agenda as ‘tensions’.

As an example, Hazel Blears recently supported Caroline Flint’s plan to demand that the
unemployed prove they are seeking work as a condition of tenancy.

This was in the same week that she described empowerment as ‘less social engineering and more social enterprise’.

Here is the nub of the issue; can you take an empowerment approach alongside using government powers to cajole people against their will?

Is empowerment about the broad values of taking people on a journey to develop their own power or just a shallow soundbite applicable to well- behaved citizens?

I can hear community development officers muttering expletives into their beards at these contradictions in a way that doesn’t seem to trouble the bright new things of empowerment theory. Is this a good or a bad thing? No doubt time will tell.

They should have known better. To some within the ruling Labour ranks and civic officialdom it was an ideal use for an overgrown slice of parkland. But few issues in recent years have inflamed public passions and created electoral jitters as the proposal to create a bar and nightclub within Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens. Last week council leaders killed off the controversial plans.

Campaigners said the decision was a victory for “people power”.

David Howat, chairman of Save Our Botanics, said: “I’m absolutely delighted. This shows that if people feel really strongly and make their views known then sometimes they will prevail.”

Kelvin MSP Pauline McNeill said: “Credit is due to everyone who has been involved in the campaign and I welcome this as the right decision.”

Steven Purcell, leader of Glasgow City Council, confirmed he has told the developers, Scotland-wide leisure chain G1 Group, that the authority will not proceed with any scheme for the site within Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens.

Yesterday, Mr Purcell said that, while the council was committed to commercial or publicly led schemes within its parks but “which do not compromise them”, it was unlikely there would be any developments in the short to medium term. He said: “Despite several months of negotiations with the developer the position is that this scheme doesn’t represent best value. I have informed the company and its managing director Stefan King that the entire scheme is now dead and that this is now being confirmed in writing.”

The issue has been a thorn in the side of Glasgow’s Labour administration since it was approved in principle last June, with protesters launching a high-profile campaign against the scheme and schisms increasingly emerging within the Labour Party.

Last month actor Robert Carlyle spoke of his “anger” over the plans, while celebrities Bill Paterson, Greg Hemphill and Ford Kiernan, Belle and Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch, writers Alistair Gray and Tom Leonard and botanists and academics from across the UK voiced opposition.

Mr King is said to be “bitterly disappointed” and is understood to have accused the city council of changing the goal posts to what had been agreed because of opposition and of going public with details of the negotiations.

Author: Radical Economics

What sustainable regeneration looks like

• Diverse range of businesses and enterprises in terms of size, social and private mix, and diversity of goods and services provided.
• Positive local money and resource flows ( a high local multiplier and local re-use of waste)
• Strong local asset base including local people’s attitudes, skills and knowledge; physical, financial and natural resources.
• Responsive public and business sector which is working to strengthen and invest in the local economy.
• Strong community and civic voice, including local activism, leadership, volunteering, and engagement in debate.
• Sustainability and a reduced environmental footprint.
• Increased understanding of economic, cultural and ecological inter-connections that link communities, span the globe and impact on the future.

“Where did all the money go?” asked Glen JeRkins, at nets Local Alchemy conference in Leicester, referring to the massive government regeneration programme as ‘New Deal for Consultants’.

In the three decades since the Urban Regeneration Act, billions has been spent on rundown neighbourhoods, said net policy director Andrew Simms, but what is there to show for it? Shiny new buildings, maybe Olympic facilities, but the same old poverty.

The purpose of this conference was to set out what can be done instead -but in a new way.

Glen is from the Marsh Farm estate in Luton, which has been on the receiving end of conventional top-down regeneration. He took part in the net conference as a kind of summit meeting to name a new direction for regeneration -not largesse delivered from above which seeps away, but using what resources are there already, people, space, money flows and imagination.

Previously, the outlines of sustainable regeneration were always in the form of a list -plugging the money flows leaks, participation, enterprise, environment. This conference was to pull t4at list together into a coherent whole, to make the shift into the mainstream.

The result was more than 200 people gathering at the Peepul Centre in Leicester, from local government, academia and the voluntary sector -even the fire brigade -and a new manifesto for sustainable regeneration, not yet finished.

It was a reflection of the success of Local Alchemy to bring all those voices and experiences together, and to bring in another factor -resilience in the face of climate change “The real key thing,” said former government minister Hilary Armstrong, summing up in the first session, “is to give people the belief and confidence in themselves to work effectively with other people.”

That is the heart of the matter of an approach that regards people’s assets as broader than simply the money they baven’t got. Those assets include the money that flows through their area, their relationships, imagination and skills, and this crucial confidence to work others.

Bring all those together, set them to work, and you have real regeneration, that works for local people and for the planet as well.

The other plenary speakers expanded this central idea, Ben Brangwyn on the transition towns movement, time banks founder Edgar Cahn on co-production, and Just Change ‘founder Sam Thekaekara from South India on holding local and global together.

We are working within an economic system that requires producers, consumers and capital, said Stan -“why do the owners of capital always get the lion’s share of the rewards?”

There is a choice, said the speakers, and it is possible for local people t~ organise regeneration by different rules.

The plenary speakers all introduced new ways of looking at the hidden assets that poorer neighbourhoods already possess, which can drag them out of poverty -from basic skills to caring, from links with producer communities to basic confidence, spending power, and the money that is already flowing through the system.

“It’s beyond cash -we are the cash,” said one of the conference delegates.

What does this mean? Does it mean that economics takes a wider, more ambitious role than before, as Neil McInvoy from the Centre of Local Economic Strategies put it? But then you might also be stuck with some of the failed assumptions of conventional economics.

“Will we ever understand that some places just don’t heed to grow?” he said asked.
Or does it mean that neighbourhoods are taking over some of the job that the outside investment, and conventional economic growth was supposed to do, because -~ net director Stewart Wallis put it -“our economic system isn’t fit for purpose”?

Either way, it means a challenge for conventional regeneration, as it edges towards the new sustainable version -but achingly slowly, given that the government has managed to reduce the targets on Local Strategic Partnerships from over 600 to 1.98 -still what Neil
McInroy called “massive fetters”.

Given also that the word ‘sustainable’ appears in the latest Sub-national Review document
44 times, but 40 of those in refers only to the ability to grow bigger. But if want to put your real assets to work, you have to measure the right things, When the wrong assets get measured and the others get ignored, then it isn’t surprising that regeneration fails in its basic task, net organisers set out before hand a draft description of a sustainable, enterprising community.

That list was kicked around by groups at the end of the conference, adding and subtracting words and sentences, out of which a consensus will eventually emerge -this is ongoing business.

Meanwhile, the debate continues, Do we need a new kind of regeneration professional to achieve that, and -if so –what kind of institutions would best support them? Can we reform the existing ones or do we have to start again? Do we use the language of
policy-makers or go it alone and make it happen anyway?

And most of all, how do we measure the right outcomes so that we get the futures we want.

Diverse range of businesses and enterprises in terms of size, social and private mix, and diversity of goods and services produced.

Author: Katrine Bussey

RURAL communities in Scotland were given a huge cash boost yesterday.

A total of £57.7 million is being made available to help “grow” local economies, improve facilities and conserve the environment.

It is the first wave of funds to be released under the £1.6 billion Scotland Rural Development Programme, designed to empower communities at grass-roots level, and is made up of cash from the Scottish Government and the European Union.

The money will be matched at local level with both public and private funds, potentially doubling the amount available to communities.

Richard Lochhead, the environment secretary, said: “This is a massive investment in rural Scotland which will see decisions taken in local areas on how best to support a wide range of grass-roots community projects.”

A total of £38.5million from the funding package will be distributed across all of rural Scotland, while £19.2million will go to the Highlands and Islands.

Sixteen local action groups will administer the cash and Mr Lochhead said: “The fact that all funding decisions are to be taken locally will greatly empower community decision-making.”