Author: Scottish Government

Transforming Scotland into a net zero nation by 2045 presents an opportunity to re-imagine the nation we live in. Whilst there is no denying the significant challenge we face in addressing the global climate emergency, it brings with it a chance to create a better, fairer, and more inclusive society for everyone: a society in which individuals and communities across Scotland are actively involved in making the decisions that affect them.

This widespread participation and engagement is essential if we are to successfully limit the effects of climate change, prepare for the impacts that are already locked in, and harness the opportunities to innovate and adapt to a changing climate. We must also include the twin challenge of biodiversity loss and how this interlinks with our work on mitigating and adapting to climate change.

In this strategy, we set out our framework for engaging the people of Scotland in this challenge. By putting our people at the heart of everything we do, we aim to enable and empower everyone in Scotland to be a part of shaping our transition in a just and fair way, building a social mandate for the societal transformation needed to become a net zero nation.

It has been seven years since our previous strategy, Low Carbon Scotland: A Behaviours Framework, was published. In that time much has changed, most recently due to the effect of COVID-19, which has altered all of our lives in many ways.

It is essential that individuals and communities are involved in ensuring a green recovery from COVID-19, and the objectives and principles set out in this strategy apply to our approach to engagement on a green recovery as well as to wider engagement on climate change, including our just transition to a net zero society.

It is also an exceptional time for our international engagement on climate action ahead of the UN Climate Summit – COP26 – taking place in Glasgow in 2021. This strategy will support us to make the most of this opportunity for engagement and to ensure COP26 places people at its heart.

Our intended audience for this strategy is primarily communicators of climate change. We recognise that government are not, and cannot, be the only ones who engage with the public on this matter. Addressing climate change will be a truly national endeavour. We wish to work collaboratively and consistently alongside trusted messengers to ensure that the public are put at the heart of our national approach. 

In this document, we set out a framework for engaging the public and encouraging action over the next 3-5 years, including the actions which the Scottish Government are taking to help encourage this.

Author: The Ferret

LINK TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE

In the shop front window of Sunny Govan community radio station there is a carefully painted heart, held between two abstract palms.

But for now, the shutters of this 20-year-old charity – based right in the centre of one of Scotland’s most historically significant urban working class communities – are pulled down.

That doesn’t look out-of-place on Govan Road where almost all the shop fronts are closed due to Covid-19 restrictions. But in recent months it has emerged that the future of this iconic community station hangs in the balance.

It was already struggling financially before the pandemic hit. But over the last year, income – from training, fundraisers, from sponsorship and ads – has dried-up. Last December auditors served station managers with a warning. Unless a deficit of £30k could be cleared it would be declared insolvent.

It was time to raise the alarm.

Sunny Govan was set-up in 2001 with the aim of reframing the tired narrative about the neighbourhood that said this former shipbuilding area was a deprived and failing one. Instead, it would shine a spotlight on the culture and identity of Govan, and highlight the good work being done in the area.

But its significance carries much further.

This was one of the first community radio stations in the UK to get its licence. Almost 15 years later, its often rough-around-the-edges output is no less eclectic. Gems like Katie’s Musical Cookbook have offered recipes for soup as a side dish to a heavy metal playlist.

Talk shows sit cheek by jowel with hip-hop, dance and reggae, and well as local musicians, DJs and activists there’s also a solid helping of politics.

It was on a Sunny G slot that Nicola Sturgeon revealed being First Minister of Scotland did not offer immunity from imposter syndrome.

“I don’t think there is a woman alive, particularly working-class women, who don’t experience that at some point in their lives, and probably quite regularly,” Sturgeon told show host Anne Hughes. Her comments were reported across Scotland and beyond.

But ask around and what people who know Sunny G talk about is what lies beneath.

It might look like a broadcasting organisation to the untrained eye, says station manager Steven Gilfoyle, aka hip hip producer and recording artist, Steg G. But spinning records is just the eighth of the iceberg sticking out of the water. The seven-eighths of support and community work lie underneath.

Before the pandemic that meant an open door policy – everyone was welcomed, the kettle had always just boiled and the phone was free if you needed to call the job centre but had no credit left. If you needed something to eat, there was a food bank, if wanted a show, you got training to help you go on air.

And then Covid-19 hit and in March – as happened everywhere – the studio closed and though many presenters skilled up and broadcast from their bedrooms, the community lost an essential hub.

By January this year Gilfoyle was forced to go public on the news that Sunny Govan’s future was under-threat.

If the community wanted the shutters to be rolled back up after Covid-19 restrictions were over, immediate action was needed.

By the time it came out, he’d known Sunny G was in trouble for months. “When I took over last April as project manager there was £56 in the bank,” he admits.

“But this was a project worth saving,” he says. “You know – some projects come and go. I get that. Some things just have their time. But this isn’t Sunny Govan’s time.”

And so once again Sunny Govan is flipping the story – setting out not to lament the station’s demise, but to talk up its rise back to health.

For Gilfoyle, part of this fight is personal. He left school with no qualifications after his dad died and had completed a music course as an adult learner when Sunny Govan first crossed his path.

He was volunteering in a recording studio in Govan Workspace in 2001 when Heather McMillan, the former studio manager and founder, knocked the door and asked if he wanted to see her new community radio station. She’d managed to get a two-week temporary licence to cover the Christmas period.

“We had very little signal coverage, so we barely reached Govan,” remembers Gilfoyle. “But [after the broadcast] we were getting people coming up with their Bob Marley records. There were script writers and poets and community activists. Very quickly we had grown into this mad team of colourful local people who wanted to make something happen.”

When the licence ended the station went online. “But we didn’t have any listeners at this point,” he laughs. “In 2002 the internet in Govan was a new thing. It wasn’t until 2007 that Ofcom decided to open up licences for community stations.”

The team was invited to an intimidatingly corporate event in Manchester and immediately felt out-of-place.

“The guy from Ofcom came on to talk about these new licences,” says Gilfoyle. “He said: “To get one, you need to be grassroots.” And we were like: “That’s us.” And they said: “You need to be a charity.” And that was us too but we could see other people in the room losing the will.

“And the third thing is you need to be experienced.” And we were that as well. So we were really chuffed thinking: “We ticked every one of those boxes”.

“What we didn’t realise till later was applying for a licence cost £600 and we didn’t have it.” They got the cans out and got shaking.

“It was a gamble for us. And it was hard work. But we did it and we were rewarded with the third community licence in the UK.”

So in 2007 Sunny Govan’s FM signal was switched on. “We wanted to be really professional so all the men wore their suits for the first three weeks,” says Gilfoyle. “We wanted to put on that air of doing our best for the community.

The image makes Donna Boyle, the presenter of the Making Recovery Visible show, laugh. But, she says, it makes sense. Sunny Govan always did its best for her.

She’s telling her story regularly now – on and off air – to show just how much the radio station has given her.

She had a happy childhood on the west coast of Scotland, until her grandfather started abusing her at just eight or nine.

As she got older she used alcohol and drugs to cope. And then when she was 17, a cousin disclosed it was also happening to her and it all came spilling out. The abuse, it emerged, had also happened to her mum and her aunt when they were kids.

Donna’s life morphed into a series of spells in chronic addiction, in prison, in mental health wards.

“That was just life until I was 24 my boyfriend overdosed,” she says. “After that my warped thinking at the time was that if I got pregnant then I would get clean. So after he died that’s what I did.”

She stopped taking drugs altogether and stayed substance free for a couple of months after the birth of her son. But then there was the infidelity of her new partner and domestic abuse. She fled and was rehoused in Glasgow.

It was when her son was still a toddler she discovered Sunny Govan – she felt welcomed when she popped in for a cup of tea, her wee boy allowed to run around without comment.

It also re-ignited an old love she’d grown up with –music. Her parents listened to Leonard Cohen, the Beatles and John Lennon, while her childhood was dominated by Madonna and Culture Club before nineties rave and the party scene took over.

But now Gilfoyle started introducing her to hip hop – giving her releases by local artists “rapping about stuff I could relate to”.

The music and the acceptance helped, though it wasn’t enough to turn her life around. She lost custody of her son to her parents (though she always continued to see him) and another ten years passed.

Aged 40 she attempted suicide – “a cry for help”, she says. The support worker who visited her in hospital got her on to a methadone programme, and into supported housing. From there she was introduced to a 12-step fellowship programme and went to her first meeting.

“I heard from people like me, who had lost their children and were living drug free,” she says. “People were living life and it gave me some hope.”

After a detox, she kept going to the meetings. At the same time her interest in the music that Gilfoyle had introduced her to back at Sunny G – that had kept her going through the bad times – started to explode.

She got a camera and started taking photographs at hip hop gigs, sharing on social media under the banner Homegrown Always Best. That led to promoting and organising other gigs, alcohol free events and festivals.

A radio production course at Sunny G followed “and then Steg and the others said what about doing a show?”

“So it started once a month and since September it’s been weekly,” she says. “I was four years clean at Christmas – my confidence is still quite low so the show has been great for building that up.”

Next week Donna starts work at the Scottish Recovery Consortium, as a social events co-ordinator. She’s 45 and it’s her first job.

And meanwhile she’s fighting to save Sunny G. “I think I would have still found my way into recovery,” she says. “But it has enriched my life so much. If it hadn’t have been there I wouldn’t have had the music and some of the friends that are in my life. So anything I can do, I will. It’s more than just radio to me.”

Matthew Ward presents the Rave Ward, a two-hour show on Saturday nights on Sunny Govan

It is, says volunteer Helen Ward, a place that epitomises the truism that everyone has a story. She is no exception. She first accompanied her blind son Matthew to the station eight years ago, when he was doing work experience.

While he – a talented musician, composer and DJ with a great radio voice “and a mad personality to go with it” – impressed in the studio, she made herself busy, cleaning the kitchen and moping the floors.

And then somehow she found herself coaxed into having a show too. “I got 10 minutes training and then was thrown into a live studio,” she laughs. “It was sink or swim.”

So while Matthew went from strength-to-strength with the Rave Ward show – two hours of underground dance music with a therapeutic edge on a Saturday night – another show on a Thursday and a breakfast slot, Helen also started carving out a niche for herself.

She learned how to work the desk so she could help produce shows for Matthew and other presenters with additional needs and built-up a following for her show Hels Bels rock.

“When I first arrived I introduced myself as Matthew’s mum,” she says. “I didn’t even think of saying that my name was Helen. I thought of myself as being in the background. Now I’m Hels Bels. One of the listeners sent me a bell and if it was a song I really liked I’d ring it. It was just a we gimmick but it was good fun.”

“When I first arrived I introduced myself as Matthew’s mum,” says Sunny Govan volunteer Helen Ward. “Now I’m Hels Bels.”

And in the background she was also there to welcome others to the space, offering a listening ear over a cuppa, a lift across town to pick-up prescriptions or whatever else was needed.

“I had a man once in tears because he had absolutely nothing. He had been put on to zero hour contract hours, hadn’t worked for three weeks and his family were starving,” she says. “So I just packed up bags of food from the local collections we’d done and you’d have thought I’d given him a million pound.”

Sometimes it’s the people that come in for help that end-up encouraging someone else they know sign up for the courses they offer – from short qualifications in fuel poverty to SQAs in production or access courses to community development. Or even to get involved in the radio’s output.

“It would be devastating if it closed,” says Ward. “It’s a hub of the community, a large family that just keeps on growing – it’s a really special place.”

“We have presenters on Sunny G at the moment who are going through the criminal justice system and presenters who are lawyers,” he says. “But nobody can see the difference. In radio you can be who you want to me.

“We simply provide a place where people can express their culture and identity, where they can talk about the issues that affect them from mental health to fuel poverty and everything in-between. There’s a confidence that comes from being heard on these issues.”

And he feels that that as a result Sunny Govan itself is being heard in its time for need. When we speak he’s just had an email from Unite, offering to donate £200.

If I hadn’t pressed it then, come April or May we were in serious trouble. Last week a listener – “and he’s not a guy with serious money” – offered £1000 to the appeal. In return the station played all 23 minutes of Pink Floyd’s Echoes.

Others are donating through paypal – the online crowdfunder has raised £11k out of the £30k target. And there’s an upsurge in companies buying sponsorship or advertising, claims Gilfoyle

Local politicians have offered help with identifying funding streams, and he says he’s “humbled” by the kind words that have come his way. “I do wake up most mornings panicking and overwhelmed, I can’t lie about that,” he adds.

“And yes, it is make or break time. But I have to be optimistic and I genuinely feel there’s hope. I couldn’t ask for a tenner here and a twenty there if I didn’t think there was.”

And so as the sun glints on the station front’s windows, he says he’s determined that despite all the struggles, it’s going to have a future. “I can see light at the end of the tunnel now,” he says.

Author: Pete Buttigieg

This time of year, my wooden desktop in the Office of the Mayor looks very similar to my computer desktop: covered in spreadsheets. It’s budget season in South Bend, Ind. — the annual reckoning. Priorities jostle against one another, and sometimes it feels as if we must choose between investing in places (fire stations, streetscapes) and investing in people (after-school programs, job training). We do some of both, of course, but the process forces us to balance two concepts of what a city is: a place and a population.

In “Palaces for the People,” Eric Klinenberg offers a new perspective on what people and places have to do with each other, by looking at the social side of our physical spaces. He is not the first to use the term “social infrastructure,” but he gives it a new and useful definition as “the physical conditions that determine whether social capital develops,” whether, that is, human connection and relationships are fostered. Then he presents examples intended to prove that social infrastructure represents the key to safety and prosperity in 21st-century urban America.

Klinenberg is an N.Y.U. sociologist best known recently as Aziz Ansari’s co-author for “Modern Romance,” in which he helped the comedian apply social science tools to better understand dating. Here, he begins with questions he first addressed in an earlier book on a lethal heat wave that struck Chicago in 1995. He asked how two adjacent poor neighborhoods on the South Side, demographically similar and presumably equally vulnerable, could fare so differently in the disaster. Why did elderly victims in the Englewood neighborhood lose their lives at 10 times the rate of those in Auburn Gresham?

The explanation had to do with social capital, the amount of interpersonal contact that exists in a community. In the neighborhood with fewer fatalities, people checked on one another and knew where to go for help; in the other, social isolation was the norm, with residents more often left to fend for themselves, even to perish in sweltering housing units. Crucially, these were not cultural or economic differences, but rather had to do with things like the density of shops and the vacancy rate along streets, which either helped or hurt people get to know one another in their communities.

The new book’s exploration of this reality begins in the basement of a library in a low-income Brooklyn neighborhood, where an Xbox-based bowling competition pits local seniors against rival teams from a dozen library branches across the borough. The example of a virtual bowling league has particular poetic resonance two decades after Robert Putnam, the Harvard political scientist, raised fears of societal collapse in his study “Bowling Alone.” Where Putnam charted the decline of American communal participation through shrinking bowling league membership, Klinenberg’s basement of virtual bowlers illustrates how technology might actually enhance our social fabric — provided there are supportive spaces. Given what we have learned about the health impacts of social isolation among the elderly, lives may depend on creating more such opportunities.

Klinenberg finds in libraries “the textbook example of social infrastructure in action,” a shared space where everyone from schoolchildren doing homework to the video-gaming elderly can get to know one another better. For him, the presence of destitute or mentally ill visitors is a feature, not a bug, of libraries, because it requires people to confront radical differences in a shared space.

Klinenberg extends the idea of social infrastructure to grade schools, college campuses, public housing, private apartment buildings, coffee shops, sidewalks, pocket parks, churches, murals, even flood-management projects in Singapore and public pools in Iceland. Pretty much any space that can affect the social fabric is within the author’s scope. Here, social infrastructure is not a subset of what we call “infrastructure” but something broader, which makes his project ambitious but also perhaps too vague: After all, if it could include virtually all public and many private or even virtual spaces, is the category even useful?

It is, especially when Klinenberg discusses social infrastructure in terms of quality, not just quantity. While some of his examples simply reinforce the inarguable fact that we need more of these resources (more libraries! more gyms! more gardens!), his most illuminating cases gauge what happens in spaces whose designs are either socially helpful or harmful. Social infrastructure becomes less a thing to maximize than a lens that communities and policymakers should apply to every routine decision about physical investment: Do the features of this proposed school, park or sewer system tend to help human beings to form connections?

In case after case, we learn how socially-minded design matters. A vaunted housing project built in 1950s St. Louis quickly became a nightmare of crime and vandalism; a smaller, adjacent complex remained relatively free of trouble because its design promoted “informal surveillance” and care of common spaces by neighbors. The reconfiguration of large urban schools into smaller, more manageable ones now shows promise in boosting graduation rates in New York — partly because this allows parents, students and teachers to form a community in which problems are addressed informally before they can disrupt learning.

Meanwhile, much of our built environment contains negative or “exclusive social infrastructure,” including gated communities in the United States and South Africa, and college fraternities, which Klinenberg condemns categorically based on their association with substance abuse and sexual assault. (The construction of a massive wall, unsurprisingly, is an example of public investment that is not conducive to social infrastructure.)

Much of the book’s most interesting content has to do with climate security. From the informal network of Houston churches that kicked into gear after Hurricane Harvey, to the unlikely rise of the Rockaway Beach Surf Club in New York as a vital hub of recovery after Hurricane Sandy, we see how the right kind of social infrastructure can aid struggling communities and even save lives by connecting people during and after disasters. As Klinenberg observes, “when hard infrastructure fails … it’s the softer, social infrastructure that determines our fate.”

Klinenberg’s approach even lets him apply appealing nuance to precincts of our social life that have become objects of simplistic head-shaking and finger-wagging. When it comes to social media, for example, he takes a look at online communities, especially for young people, and pointedly suggests that teenagers turn to the digital realm largely because they have little alternative. Modern parenting norms make it less likely they will be allowed to physically move around their neighborhoods and communities. When unable to use traditional spaces like streets or parks, young people have no choice but to rely on the internet as their primary social infrastructure. It’s a point that should invite introspection among parents who require their children to remain within sight, then scold them for spending too much time looking at screens.

“Palaces for the People” reads more like a succession of case studies than a comprehensive account of what social infrastructure is, so those looking for a theoretical framework may be disappointed. But anyone interested in cities will find this book an engaging survey that trains you to view any shared physical system as, among other things, a kind of social network. After finishing it, I started asking how ordinary features of my city, from streetlights to flowerpots, might affect the greater well-being of residents. Physically robust infrastructure is not enough if it fails to foster a healthy community; ultimately, all infrastructure is social.

PALACES FOR THE PEOPLE
How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life
By Eric Klinenberg

Author: Stornoway News

Get the crofts which we already have, back into full use.

That’s the overwhelming demand for action coming from young crofters across the Hebrides and beyond.

Following overwhelming response, The Scottish Crofting Federation (SCF) Young Crofters group hosted a second workshop to find solutions to the difficulties in getting access to crofts, with the main issues centring about the need for regulation and effective law.

“The main issue identified by participants,” said the chair of the SCF Donald Mackinnon, “is that unused crofts are not being passed on, or are being sold as house sites for prices outwith the reach of young folk and locals.

“This has been going on for a long time and, frankly, no one with the power to do anything about this shameful situation seems to care enough to act. This is supposed to be a regulated system of land tenure, but the regulator, the Crofting Commission, seems to be bogged down in a reactive role dealing with administrative procedures.

“The commission is making efforts to tackle absenteeism but is not even managing to scratch the surface on the issue of neglected crofts that are in breach of crofting law.

“Crofting desperately needs a regulator that can be proactive. This will only happen if the commission has the resources to do its job properly. The situation is worsening and it is obvious that whatever strategy is being adopted is not working. There has to be a new approach.”

The workshop on “Access to Crofts” was so oversubscribed that a second session had to be run – also filled to capacity. The focus was on identifying the issues and then coming up with ideas on how to address them, how to unstick the current situation and get inactive crofts back into use.

Mr MacKinnon continued. “We welcomed the announcement of the new commission posts for crofting development but this should just be the beginning; we want to see development officers in the townships, talking to people, advising, helping to sort real situations.

“A service where those with unused crofts are facilitated to let go of them was raised again and again in the sessions. It needs to be done in a mediated way so that it can work to everyone’s advantage. Managing township development plans is not new, SCF and HIE were doing this years ago but funding ceased. The commission is ideally placed to get this up and running again, it must be adequately resourced and there must be the will to do it.

“The law is deeply flawed,” Mr MacKinnon added. “We have to see the promised reform restarted early in the new session following the elections, as a pledge in parties’ manifestos. Crofting law reform started in 1998, the Committee of Inquiry on Crofting reported in 2008 and ‘The Sump’, the list of amendments that are needed to the act, was presented to the Scottish Government in 2014.

“And yet the law is still not fit for purpose and this regulated system is, by-and-large, unregulated because the regulator does not have adequate resources. As I have said before, this is a model of land tenure that is internationally admired and yet it is stagnating, neglected by the very bodies tasked with keeping it.”

“To change this situation will take political commitment”, Mr MacKinnon concluded. We will help the Crofting Commission in any way that we can but we will also take this issue to the Scottish Parliament, asking for it to press the government to resource the Crofting Commission so that it can do the job of freeing up crofts, making crofts available, bringing croft prices down.

“The message is clear – action is required now before it is too late.”

Author: Jamie Hailestone, New Start Magazine

Not enough has been done to empower Scottish people from deprived backgrounds to take action in their communities, according to MSPs.

A new report by the Scottish Parliament’s local government and communities committee has criticised the implementation of the 2015 Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act and said more must be done to help deprived communities in this regard.

The committee said a lack of resources and support at grassroots level is hindering progress in empowering communities, with the Scottish Household Survey revealing only 18% of Scots feel they can influence decisions affecting their local area.

They said more must be done to identify how to overcome barriers to engagement and have called on the Scottish Government to work with public bodies and COSLA to help communities use their rights to challenge and influence decisions and services.

‘Our extensive engagement work has made it clear to us that community wellbeing is synonymous with community empowerment,’ said committee convener, James Dornan.

‘Engaged and empowered communities are essential if people are to feel they have a real say in how their community operates.

‘We’ve heard a number of really inspiring stories showing community empowerment driving positive change but it’s clear more must be done to ensure communities across Scotland, and particularly those from disadvantaged areas, can be a part of this.

‘The committee is concerned by evidence we have received of bodies coming across as indifferent or even hostile to the rights communities have to influence decisions,’ he added.

‘Knowledge is power and there is no doubt more must be done to raise awareness of participation requests and asset transfer requests which can give communities the tools to feel empowered.

Author:  Stephen Delahunty

Large-scale giving by the super-rich has done almost nothing to redistribute wealth from rich to poor and could be perpetuating social inequalities, according to new research.

Researchers at the University of Bath School of Management and Newcastle University Business School found that giving by the super-wealthy had failed to significantly benefit poor countries in the developing world, contrary to popular belief.

The study, Elite Philanthropy in the United States and the United Kingdom in the New Age of Inequalities, reveals that giving by wealthy individuals helped to preserve social inequalities while paying considerable dividends to donors in the form of privilege and influence in society and politics.

It highlights how funding frequently comes with strings attached, with the super-rich able to pursue personal and political agendas through major charitable foundations.

It also allows individuals to use their financial clout to influence governments and the educational institutions that attract a major proportion of high-end donations.

Researchers identified several incentives for elite philanthropists, including the amassing of “social and cultural capital” – for example, receiving honours such as UK knighthoods for their services to charity.

Viewed in this light, researchers said, donors could effectively buy their way into circles of influence and networks.

Tax advantages also play an important part, and researchers found that attempts to reform the tax issue – such as a cap on tax relief on donations – had failed in the past because philanthropists had almost universally opposed any changes to the system.

Professor Mairi Maclean, of the University of Bath School of Management, said the findings could be difficult for people to come to terms with.

She acknowledged that some very wealthy people had given away sizeable parts of their fortunes, but said the research showed that most of their peers had not, with combined donations amounting to only a small percentage of the total wealth of the super-rich.

“The fact is most super-wealthy people give very little relative to their means,” she said.

“We do accept that many elite philanthropists act sincerely to improve the lives of others, but we suggest that altruism alone does not explain their actions.

“It is far more likely that philanthropy yields substantive rewards beyond the emotional satisfactions of beneficence – and our research bears this out.”

Author: Social Farms and Gardens

The community growing sector’s experiences of COVID-19, as projects, communities and individuals has differed widely. Projects and partners across Scotland have come together and reached out over the last year to share and discuss our challenges and opportunities, to seek support and guidance. These insights are enlightening both as to the ‘state of the sector’ and the role it can play in recovery and renewal.

Our experiences may have differed, however, many of us share hope and a clear ambition to play a bigger part. Through over 80 voices, from across Scotland we share the reflections and lessons, the adaptions we have made through uncertainty and change, and the various stages of lockdown.

Social Farms & Gardens (Scotland) would like to thank all those involved, including members, partners, and the Community Growing Forum Scotland for their time and commitment, and moving stories of resilience and hope.

Growing Back Stronger: the Community Growing Sector and a Healthier, Greener and Fairer Scotland

Key Findings:

So what do our experiences tell us about the ‘state of the sector’, its resilience and role in the community.

• Communities and citizens have a heightened and increased appreciation of the power of greenspace, community connection and activities, access to local food, and the grassroots response to the crisis. This has shone a spotlight on the many facets of community growing as an integral local resource.
• The network has responded in a multitude of amazing ways; from providing (when permitted) safe, active spaces for people to garden together, to processing and distributing emergency food and a lot more.
• The network is aware of just how important their work is in supporting people to maintain connections and a level of physical and mental wellbeing. We are Better Outdoors.
• Many projects, people, and communities, want to grow more food, to share what we grow and be a hub to distribute excess food that is available.
• Working more intentionally and positively on taking climate and nature action, connecting the issues and opportunities we have a unique role in engaging a wide range of people in action.
• Sectoral guidance to operate has been well received, though, understandably at times hard to keep up with and interpret; many groups be they staffed or volunteer led, have found this overwhelming at times.
• Those operating in more informal settings rather than statutory services, with associated layers of decision making, have often been more able to respond flexibly and keep their spaces open and continue to serve their communities, in often innovative ways.
• Central to groups’ ability and success in pivoting their delivery and approach has been developing and working in partnership, locally, regionally and nationally.
• However, not every community has had the chance ‘to grow’. We need equity of access and opportunity.

“If you liken our sector to what happens when you prune something hard, the following spring the shoots and fruits come back even stronger. We can play a strong part in a changed ecosystem and flourish.”

• Many new partnerships have been formed and tested, everyone reported that working in partnership has been central to remaining connected and relevant in this time of crisis.
• Small amounts of flexible grant funding during this period has been enormously useful, however grant funding needs to be more flexible, equitable and accessible to all, and to a wider range of potential applicants. Projects serving their communities spend a disproportionate amount of time on raising and sustaining funds. This impacts considerably on delivery.
• Additionally, if community growing spaces are to play a more coherent role across multiple agendas – including community resilience and empowerment, public health, climate action and green jobs, this requires longer term funding and resource.
• Despite a difficult year the sector remains hopeful for the future, and with adequate support and resource, we are keen, and will be ready, to play a pivotal role in a green recovery.
• Finally, and perhaps most importantly for a mostly volunteer dependent sector, the people who run and volunteer for projects have demonstrated their resilience and innovation through the pandemic; ambition is high, however many are overstretched, energy and reserves are low, and for community growing to ‘grow back stronger’ we need support, locally and nationally, that does not bring additional burdens, is sector specific, ambitious and aimed at enabling sustainability and growth.

Author: Danielle Kelly,  Simon Teasdale,  Artur Steiner &  Helen Mason 

Research paper from Glasgow Caledonian University : Men’s Sheds in Scotland: the potential for improving the health of men

Abstract of paper

Recent policy focus is on the ‘non-obvious’ role of community-based organisations in tackling causes of poor health, such as social exclusion. Men’s Sheds are a type of community-based organisation offering health and wellbeing benefits to men, despite this not being the explicit reason they exist. A qualitative study was conducted in Scotland to identify sustainability challenges that impact on the ability of Sheds to become a formal healthcare service. Findings showed that a reliance on ageing and retired volunteers to undertake operational tasks and generate income to fund activities affected the ability of Sheds to sustain and develop. Further, members preferred their Sheds to remain informal and flexible to fit their specific needs. Although Sheds are recognised for their health and wellbeing benefits to men, policymakers must recognise that formalising their activities might detract from the Shed’s primary aims. This paper summarises specific policy implications and recommendations, taking into consideration tensions between the expectations placed on Sheds to expand into formal healthcare delivery, and the needs of Shed users.

Highlights:

• Men’s Shed are known for their ability to contribute to men’s health and wellbeing.
• The potential of Shed to take on a formal healthcare role is questionable because of a reliance on ageing and retired volunteers and a preference to remain informal.
• Policymakers must recognise that although Sheds might be well placed to offer formal health care this may detract from their primary aims.

Full paper here

Author: Nicholas Gubbins, CES

Letter from Community Energy Scotland’s Nicholas Gubbins to Crown Estate Scotland

Author: Sandra Dick, The Herald

In a small caravan rocked by westerly winds, with occasional frozen pipes and no internet, law student Caitlin McNeill settled down to write her law dissertation.

There was, she says, particular motivation to get it done.

“I was born here, and my father’s side have been here for generations,” she says, referring to Colonsay, the Hebridean island where her ancestor, John of the Ocean arrived from Barra in 1715.

“It’s demoralising that there’s this place where you’re born and know so well and are in love with, yet it feels like you can’t make a life here for yourself.

“I ended up being so scunnered with the housing situation that I left to study law thinking it might help me find a way to fix it.”

For visitors to the isle of Colonsay, it is a paradise of pristine sandy beaches and natural beauty, with abundant wildlife and peaceful way of life.

Yet few who stay in one of its holiday homes might associate the caravans dotted around the island with a housing crisis so bad that it is said to have brought Colonsay close to breaking point.

Such is the shortage of affordable homes that some lifelong islanders and others drawn to its peaceful way of life are either squashed into cramped caravans, bouncing between short-term lets or bunking own in friends’ or relatives’ homes.

Similar problems can be found in many west coast islands where property has become scarce at a time when demand for holiday accommodation from tourists is on the rise.

However, the issue is said to be particularly challenging on Colonsay, where more than 40% of properties are now used by tourists. Among them are Colonsay Estate properties which once provided homes for locals, and which are now holiday lets instead.

That plus an ageing population and the collapse seven years ago of a community bid to buy land for affordable homes, is blamed for leaving the Hebridean gem close to breaking point, with lifeline services at risk from a lack of working-age islanders.

Now, however, much to islanders’ relief, a talks involving third party go-betweens and £390,000 from the Scottish Land Fund has smoothed the way for land in Scalasaig to be sold for community use, some eight years after a similar deal collapsed.

And, nearly two decades after the island’s last affordable homes were built, islanders are at last excitedly planning nine community-backed homes which, once a second phase of 24 properties is complete, will help significantly boost the island’s population.

Buoyed by the breakthrough, Colonsay Community Development Company has launched a £25,000 Crowdfunder appeal to help with construction costs. Within days it has almost hit its half-way point.

All of which is a welcome leap forward considering the bitter disappointment after the collapse of 2013 negotiations which saw islanders and Colonsay’s Gordonstoun-educated owner, Alex Howard, fail to agree its price.

It’s just one issue which has upset the fine balance between owner and islanders down the years, including one in which the laird, nephew of the Queen’s longest serving lady in waiting Lady Susan Hussey, wrongly accused locals of stealing gravel from one of his beaches.

Relations were also strained after islanders’ bid to buy Colonsay’s only pub failed when the laird refused to lower his £545,000 price tag to meet their valuation.

While there was upset last summer over plans to re-open up to 15 holiday homes to visitors, resulting in a petition from islanders concerned over Covid-19 risks.

However, it’s the need for affordable housing which has challenged relations most.

“When I was younger, the estate of Colonsay provided a lot of private rented accommodation but a lot of family cottages were sold, and farmhouses became big 12-bed holiday lets,” says Caitlin, 27, a director of Colonsay Community Development Company and leader of the fundraising campaign “It has happened slowly, but surely.

“It’s scary when you set out to make your life here and there’s nowhere to stay. There’s a feeling of the ground moving underneath their feet.”

“Because there’s so few of us of standard working age, it feels like we are constantly having to do everything, from organising social events, running shops, catering for tourists.

“At some point you feel like you want something back, like somewhere decent to live.”

Of Colonsay’s population of 130, less than 30 are under 50, while only ten are between 18 and 30. Later this year the primary school roll will drop from eight to just four children.

The accommodation shortage has seen families quit the island, while one fish farm worker ended up living hundreds of miles away on the mainland and commuting back to Colonsay for work, staying for weeks at a time in temporary accommodation.

Nursing assistant Rosalind Jewell and her husband Chris, both 37, moved seven times in five years before finally finding more settled accommodation in time for the birth of their son, Ellis.

“At first we stayed in shared accommodation with another couple, then every year and a half we were having to move,” says Rosalind, Colonsay Community Development Company’s project co-ordinator. “At one point we had just six months in a property and really thought about leaving.

“There are a lot of people with second homes here. With the pandemic, you can see more starkly how there are homes but there’s no-one living in them.

“At the same time, you have people living in caravans and homes which aren’t suitable – some of the property here isn’t great.”

The land deal was struck with support from Communities Housing Trust, Highlands & Islands Enterprise, Argyll and Bute Council and seafood giant MOWI, which will provide additional homes for its workers.

Work on the first community-backed properties will start in summer.

Colonsay owner Alex Howard, who prefers not to use his “old hat” Lord Strathcona title, says the land was “heavily discounted”, however, some islanders suggest it might have simply been handed over as a goodwill gesture instead.

“The island is treated as a business,” says one. “We understand that in some respects, but they could have done more not to rub people up the wrong way.

“I suspect they think that by selling the land they’ve done the island a huge favour, but they could have just given it to the community.”

The laird, meanwhile, whose ancestor Sir Donald A. Smith bought Colonsay in 1905 after rising from crofter’s son to become one of Canada’s richest men and famed for his philanthropy, dismisses suggestions that island landowners could do more to ease property problems.

“That’s a record played many times,” he says. “It’s too easy for people to point the finger at landowners, farmers or estates like ours and say it’s all their fault. It very seldom tends to be the case.

“We absolutely recognise the need for community and working with the community. However, it’s very complicated. You can’t click your fingers and say ‘you’ll have a lot of houses and a lot of jobs’. There are no guarantees in life these days.”

As for the loss of homes for holiday lets, he adds: “We would never ask someone to move out to redeploy buildings. Houses became empty because people left them, not because we asked them to leave.

“We haven’t taken houses out of residential letting and turned them to self-catering units in some 20 years.”

Meanwhile, Alastair Redman, Argyll and Bute councillor for the area, suggests the new homes can be a turning point for the island.

“With land ownership comes responsibility to islands and the community. Where a community group wants to develop land we should not be throwing up barriers, we should be making it easier for this to happen.

“It’s much better when landowners and estates work with local communities to find local solutions. We don’t want landowners at loggerheads with local communities.”