Author: Catriona Stewart The Herald

WHEN the Victorian philanthropists gave up their land for the common good of the common man, could they have imagined what like those greenspaces would be 175 years later?

Much they would recognise: the fine entrances of imposing iron gates, the ornate railings, the avenues of trees, grand terraces and rainbow flowerbeds.

How would they feel, however, to see their gifts fenced off from general use and trampled by festival fans?

In Glasgow this summer, Kelvingrove Park has been commandeered by Fiesta x FOLD, an event that began last year in the park’s bandstand but this year spreadeagled into the greenspace proper. This meant large hoardings going up to prevent passers-by being able to glimpse performances for free and a national cycle route closed to accommodate it.

Residents at Glasgow Green had it the worst in the city with the TRNSMT music festival, which ran over two weekends before the singer Bruno Mars took up residence. The combined events put the space out of use for a month. Local residents complained of having what is, essentially, their garden removed from them without their say-so.

Of course, the organisers of TRNSMT came back swinging, saying the event was of wider economic benefit to Glasgow, residents had been offered tickets and it was a chance to show off the city to the international performers who took part.

Kelvingrove and Glasgow Green are not the only city parks being hawked for profit. There is a licensing application in for a German beer festival on Queen’s Park Recreation Ground, which was already used in June by Zippos circus.

In Victoria Park there is a stooshie over plans from Glasgow City Council’s Land and Environmental Services to grass over 28 of the main flower beds in the formal gardens at the end of the summer.

These are Victorian flower beds, part of a landscape listed by Historic Environment Scotland, and the Friends of Victoria Park group puts up a thin edge of the wedge argument against the local authority’s intentions, believing the remaining flower beds will soon also be under threat. Already the park has lost planting at its bowling greens and in its, again historic, Fossil Grove.

The council suggests the Friends might like to take over the flower beds but, firstly, it is a large ask from a small volunteer group and, secondly, that takes paid work from council employees.  

Trying to pass responsibilities for parks onto Friends groups is a common tactic seen from local authorities around Britain as maintenance budgets are slashed.

Victoria Park recently hosted FriendsFest, a festival based on the American sit-com. Friends of Victoria Park wanted the council to pledge to use any money from FriendsFest to maintain the flowerbeds, however, income generated by the parks is pooled and shared out generally among the council’s Land and Environmental Services.

In Edinburgh, hoardings have gone up around Princes Street Gardens to prevent sight of the Summer Sessions event, to general dismay.

Surely an entrepreneurial city should monetise its assets in straightened times, even if that’s using a park as a drive-in movie theatre or music venue? When budgets are tight, low priority issues need special case pleading to ensure they have the resources they deserve. It’s interesting, given all parks provide for communities, that there isn’t a national body to defend them.

Parks, the lungs of our cities, surely are a special case and not to be colonised by private events. Functional and beautiful playgrounds for adults and children, they are gardens for those who live in flats. They cool the air of cities in summer temperatures. Parks support current key policy areas – outdoor play in education and a need to encourage exercise to stave off obesity. They are good for mental health.

Most of all, they are “ours”, a collective, shared and, importantly, free amenity, and so the privatisation and commercialisation of open spaces feels jarring. It is cannot be right to prevent use of these common plots for the sake of limited numbers of people.

There is, however, only so much charity to be gleaned from local communities and only so much revenue in council coffers.

If the parks must earn their keep, above all they already give us, then there should be discussions about more creative, less intrusive ways to do it. A good start would be a cap on the number of days a year a park can be out of general commission. They must not become event spaces first and parks second.

Parks exist as rare egalitarian spaces where equal access for all should be enshrined.

They are public property, not revenue streams and to make them so would be a short sighted move. Without a campaigning body, it’s up to communities to protect their parks. Start by using them: the more people are using them, the less likely we are to lose them. 

Author: Jonathan Rimmer, The Skinny

There’s something depressingly ironic about the gentrification of Leith Walk, the iconic strip that connects the port of Leith with Edinburgh’s city centre. Renowned local author Irvine Welsh depicted the process vividly in his 2002 book Porno, which sees his Trainspotting characters respond in various ways to the visible middle-class encroachment of the place they grew up in. In real life, it’s Leith’s rich cultural heritage and artistic identity as expressed by the likes of Welsh, which makes it so attractive to incoming developers – at least in part.

With property prices soaring and long-time residents being ‘priced out,’ it’d be easy to point the finger at some of the cultural ventures that have contributed to Leith’s growing reputation as one of the ‘hippest’ spots to hang out in the country. But many community-led enterprises and artistic hubs have also come under threat – in March, it was revealed that Leith Depot, the only dedicated live music venue in the area, was earmarked to be demolished to make way for student housing and a hotel development.

For many locals, enough was enough. The Save Leith Walk campaign was set up in March to oppose the Drum Property firm’s plans to demolish the old red sandstone buildings on the walk, including Leith Depot. The campaigners believe it’s a last stand by a community that is “often ignored” in favour of big-time investors building “elite multi-million-pound corporate developments.” Leith Depot promoter Ryan Drever, who moved from Glasgow to work at the venue after it opened, believes the campaign has tapped into a sentiment held by the Edinburgh music scene as a whole.

He says: “The development represents a wider problem. I know Glasgow is affected by gentrification too, but I think the city celebrates its music scene a little more. It seems weird to me that you’d take an existing popular place and put an unpopular thing in its place. It’s just hard to see how their plans would benefit the community in any way. We felt that was important with Leith Depot – you need to respect these old buildings and make them useful for local people. If you want to establish a pub, fine, but why not do what’s needed?

“If you’re going to take away local businesses people care about, it affects the wider culture of Edinburgh. It’s not just about us – it’s about Leith Walk and the community. People might not see the cultural significance, but if a community does then you should be paying attention to that if you’re developing. We don’t run the Save Leith Walk campaign but we’re a part of it and support it.”

Leith Depot is more than just a trendy restaurant and bar – although it’s not short on veggie options or craft ales. It’s the only space on Leith Walk dedicated to showcasing live music every night, whether it be up-and-coming local acts or small-to-mid-sized touring bands. The owners don’t charge artists or promoters looking to hire out and, crucially, have opened it up for anyone in the local community to use if needed.

Having supported the local campaign more widely, running fundraisers, hosting stalls and selling bespoke ‘Save Leith Walk’ merchandise, the venue are now set to host an entire week of live music in mid-July under the banner of Love Live Music Week to raise awareness about the venue itself. Final line-ups are to be announced soon, but those already billed to perform include folk singer Chrissy Barnacle, Phillip Taylor of Glasgow rockers PAWS, pop collective The Spook School and Johnny Lynch aka Pictish Trail.

For Drever, using music to protest was a no-brainer. He says: “Right now, the best thing we can do is be louder and more fun than ever. If what we’re trying to say at a basic level is ‘this place is a fun place to go and hang out and we don’t want it to go’ then we want to throw a party and show that. By organising a whole week, we can make a real event out of it and send a message.

“Neil Pennycook was key on this – he knew when all the information about applications being lodged were to be made public and all the key details. Soon, a lot of musicians who were pals of ours were asking how they could help. We were already planning to do a big fundraiser for St Columba’s Hospice – an all day-festival on 14 July with local bands – so we’re using the whole week to raise awareness about gentrification. Some of the money will go to the campaign and some to charities and causes like Drake Music.”

It’s easy to sneer at the Leith Depot case – plucky punk promoters taking on a corporate property giant makes for a great David vs Goliath narrative in isolation. But many artists involved in the campaign genuinely consider the struggle to be symptomatic of a wider conflict between guardians of Scotland’s culture and heritage and the forces of capital seeking to exploit areas using the pretence of regeneration.

Mercury Prize-winning trio Young Fathers, who have recorded all their albums in Leith, called the campaign a “flag in the ground” because “all the stuff that makes an area desirable – the mix, the artistic community, the grit, the energy, they all disappear when gentrification happens.” Their call comes in the wake of the closure of Edinburgh venues such as Studio 24, Electric Circus Picturehouse and Silk due to similar developments.

However, not all hope is lost. In 2015, Morvern Cunningham initiated the Leith Creative project, which maps all the instances of artistic works and hubs in the area. She estimates that more than 1000 artists and creative businesses operate in Leith, with a far greater number working from home. The research, which now encompasses a huge community engagement programme, suggests there’s still plenty of scope for the community themselves to lead developments going forward.

Cunningham says: “The challenge for Leith now is to retain its identity and integrity in the face of rising house prices and increased development in the area. Increased development, in an already densely populated area, is seen as having a negative impact onto already overloaded services and local businesses who are perceived to be under threat.

“In terms of the wishes of local people in relation to development, across the board, Leithers are calling for social housing as opposed to more student flats being built in the area. There is a huge strength of feeling with regards to the Stead’s Place proposed developments that will affect local community assets such as Leith Depot and Sikh Sanjog/Punjabi Junction, but these are endemic of a wider issue relating to disempowerment and local people feeling a lack of agency and control over the planning decisions that are made in their communities. 

“The work that Leith Creative has done to date and campaigns such as Save Leith Walk reflect the huge pride and passion that Leith as a community encapsulates. Its heart is fit to bursting. I have great faith and trust in Leith’s ability to persevere and embrace its challenges. There are great changes ahead, but I am hugely hopeful for Leith’s bright future. Sunshine on Leith…”

Author: Alan Simpson, The Herald

They are four remote streets with a handful of houses among them standing amid the harsh windswept environment of the islands.

But the crofting communities on Lewis are poised for a share of a multi million pound windfall as they bid for Government contracts to supply the National Grid from their own wind turbines.

The communities in Sandwick with Aignish and Melbost plan to take control of 21 turbines from EDF and provide annual income 100 times more than what the energy giant proposes.

It comes as Scotland is set for a lucrative renewable energy boom which experts say will transform local communities.

UK ministers have announced that wind power projects on islands will now be able to apply for subsidies which would remove the element of financial risk that comes with building away from the mainland.

Island schemes will become eligible for a “Contract for Difference” (CfD) with the UK Government, which covers the shortfall between the cost of investing in infrastructure in remote locations and the average market price for electricity in the UK market.

This ensures electricity generators have stable revenues while customers are insulated against rising bills.

This has opened the door for communities across the islands to plan their own wind farms to raise much-needed funds for local infrastructure.

Wind is increasingly seen as a key natural resource in the Western Isles, with the potential to boost the economic future of the islands.

Now the four crofting townships on Lewis have become the first to bid in the Contract for Differences auction in May.

The four townships which will be bidding are Sandwick North Street, Sandwick East Street, Melbost & Branahuie and Aignish.

Altogether, they hope to develop 21 turbines, with a total output of 105MW. Although that comprises four different schemes, they all meet or exceed the 5MW threshold for eligibility into the scheme.

North Street is planning one turbine of 5MW, while Aignish is planning two (10MW total), Melbost eight (40MW) and East Street 10 (50MW).

It is also the latest twist to a saga that has seen the townships locked in a legal battle with EDF and its partner Wood Group in an audacious bid to build their own smaller project.

The townships have applied to the Crofting Commission for an area big enough for 21 turbines to be effectively removed from EDF’s control and given to them.

But the multinational’s operating arm, Lewis Wind Power, has filed a petition at the Scottish Land Court, asking it to throw out the crofters’ objections and approve its lease.

Both sides in this David and Goliath struggle are refusing to back down and the only thing they agree on is that the outcome will have far-reaching consequences for the future of the entire Western Isles. Sandwick North Street representative Rhoda Mackenzie said: “It’s a very minimum of 10 times more if we own these 21 turbines, compared to if EDF own them.

“So if the townships get control of these turbines, we will be able to put more than £5million a year into the Western Isles economy, compared to about £525,000 from EDF.

“We could do a lot with that money. We’ve got massive cutbacks from government.

“We’ve got a black hole to fill. We’ve got social problems to address. There’s gaps in social care.

“We need to address the problems of the ageing population, social isolation and young people leaving. We need to be more innovative.

“We need to invest in different technologies to reverse the trend of depopulation.

“It’s vitally important that the Western Isles develop these renewables projects for themselves.”

If successful at the auction, Ms Mackenzie stressed that all the profits would go into a community benefit fund for distribution throughout the whole of the Western Isles.

She said: “We want to spread this, to invest in the economy of the entire Western Isles, from the Butt to Barra. The profit won’t be kept by the four townships.

“With us, all the profits would be put into a charitable trust and distributed via a scoring matrix.”

The bid comes as one in ten children in the Western Isles lives in poverty and the number of households suffering from fuel poverty is running at more than 50%, according to official figures.

More than 40% of the working population are in public sector employment, either with the local authority or the health service. Tourism is the main growth industry.

The townships are encouraged that rivals EDF already has full planning consent for its original scheme as it wants to put its turbines in the same places.

Agents for the townships have been working on the necessary bird studies for nearly two years now and expect the study for the latest breeding season will be completed this month. As soon as this is completed, the final preparations will be made ahead of submitting applications for planning consent to Western Isles Council.

Will Collins, LWP Project Manager, said: “Lewis Wind Power’s proposals would benefit the local economy through the opportunity for up to 20% community ownership across both of our developments, rental payments to community landlord The Stornoway Trust, and compensation payments to local crofters, as well as the £900,000 community benefit fund.

“In addition, it should not be overlooked that LWP’s projects currently make up almost 90% of the consented wind projects in development on the island, meaning they are critical to the business case for the new interconnector with the mainland, which would unlock further investment in the future.”

Author: Senscot

Adventure Tourism – A briefing from Senscot for communities and social enterprises

Author: Helen Jarvis

Since the first squatters arrived in 1971, the self-proclaimed Freetown of Christiania has inspired radical thinking and social experimentation. Affectionately described as “loser’s paradise”, the squat became a haven for young people unable to access affordable housing in Copenhagen, and activist pioneers from all over the world.

In July 2012, Christiania struck a deal with the Danish state to “normalise” its status. The change was fraught: after 40 years of illegal occupation, a community of activists fiercely opposed to the idea of private property had to establish a foundation and purchase the entire site, with the exception of some features, which were heritage listed.

The deal enabled Christiania to buy itself free of speculation, as a common resource for everybody and nobody. Today, Christiania receives hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, making it the most popular tourist destination in Copenhagen after Tivoli Gardens and the statue of The Little Mermaid.

Growth and the good life

It’s considered normal for cities and states to measure success in terms of economic growth. But critics point to the treadmill of addictive consumption, property speculation, long working hours, debt, waste, one-upmanship, fast food and short-lifespan technologies that unending growth sets in motion. Opposing this trend, communities such as Christiania pursue “degrowth” by prioritising human relations over market relations; maximising sharing, togetherness, social justice and the health of the planet.

The pressures to conform with mainstream society can be divisive for the 800 or so residents managing their lives communally in Christiania. Big decisions are made through a decentralised democratic structure: 14 area meetings and a “common meeting” must reach consensus between artists, activists and cannabis dealers on Pusher Street.

A self-built home.  

In 2012, a minority of residents wanted to be allowed to buy and sell homes that they had built or renovated for themselves. The final deal with the Danish state prevented this. Residents have the right to occupy, but not to buy or sell their homes or businesses. The whimsical variety of domestic architecture that has evolved makes Christiania visibly distinct from surrounding up-market neighbourhoods.

The residents’ resistance

I know from my brief time living in Christiania as researcher in residence in 2010 that degrowth values were practised there long before this term became associated with a broad movement of alternative, ethical and ecological actions.

From the outset, it was the Christiania way to renovate and adapt rather than to tear down existing buildings, and to build with reclaimed materials at minimum costs. This also made it possible to get by on a low income, with reduced hours in paid employment, giving residents a way to resist the earn-to-spend treadmill.

Christiania is known as a place where nothing goes to waste. Numerous craft skills and social enterprises thrive on a culture of making do and mending. Elsewhere in Copenhagen similar local livelihoods fail to flourish under profit maximising conditions. The community has won prizes for comprehensive garbage collection and recycling. The collectively run Green Hall trades in salvaged and repurposed building materials.

Six years on

This summer, Christiania hosts a festival of degrowth, to show that it is ethical and green to resist the burden of conspicuous consumption. The festival coincides with an exhibition of archives on the history of the place, which forms part of the sixth International Degrowth Conference taking place just across the Öresund Bridge in Malmö, Sweden.

One example of grassroots degrowth since 2012 is the 12.8m Danish Kroner (£1.5m) raised from a social model of investment: the “People’s Christiania Share”. The scale of this crowdfunding (shares are symbolic and have no financial value) outstrips previous experiments with alternative currency. These include payment of a Christiania wage for community jobs – for example, working in the bakery, gardens, laundry, waste collection or machine hall – which functions much like the degrowth policy of basic income, where everyone is paid a minimum stipend.

By comparison, police estimate the cannabis market on Pusher Street to be worth 635m Danish Kroner (£74m) annually. While social models of investment benefit Christiania, profits from the hash market drive growth and speculation elsewhere. Recognising this conflict, residents chose in May this year to shut down Pusher Street temporarily. Younger residents are driving this shift from individual freedom (to profit from criminal activity) to mutual responsibility (for future generations and the planet). This coincides with broad based support for the recent crackdown on intimidating cannabis markets in Christiania.

The festival of degrowth will introduce visitors to a “village of alternatives”. My research shows that Christiania is an inspirational space to think differently about conventional standards of living, precisely because of the absence of private property. A collective shift in mindset can be achieved here, which would not be possible in neighbourhoods of conventional single family homes.

Making the magic

Yet puzzles remain, when it comes to practising sustainable degrowth at scale. One reason why Christiania’s car-free landscape is so “magical” is that residents live at remarkably low density: at first glance, they seem to live in a public park.

While this site might otherwise be expected to accommodate several thousand people in high density social housing, the legal safeguards of the 2012 deal endow Christiania exceptional experimental status. This allows residents to take risks with living creatively on a low income, enjoying close friendships in place of material consumption.

There are lessons here for places where degrowth is dismissed as impossibly Utopian, limited to fringe green debates and reduced goals of “sufficient living standards”. In the UK, state sponsored private property and ownership impose smaller private homes, rather than collective ownership of private and shared spaces.

But from Christiania, we learn that smaller private spaces only benefit sustainable degrowth when combined with collective ownership and generous community space for shared use: people come together to share skills and collectively manage scarce resources to reduce consumption. The hope is that as young green activists gather in Christiania this summer, thousands of visitors will look favourably upon collective living as the new normal.

Author: ResPublica

The Government could deliver a £31 billion boost to the economy over five years by abolishing 201 district and borough councils in England and handing over their powers to county halls, a new report has said. The report from think tank ResPublica calls for the abolition of the historic two-tier system of local government, which sees most rural areas of England covered by both a county council and a smaller district or borough authority with sometimes overlapping responsibilities.

 ResPublica director Phillip Blond said the system is causing ‘needless confusion’, as businesses and developers find their plans frustrated by ‘parochial’ decision-making on strategic issues. Ditching the two-tier system and following the example of unitary councils adopted by most cities would help iron out wide variations in productivity which see workers in Cornwall take five days to produce the same value that can be delivered in three days in Surrey, he said. 

With uncertain economic conditions after Brexit, the report said it was ‘vital’ for counties to be prepared to weather the possible storm, particularly as those which voted most strongly to leave the EU are thought to be most vulnerable to any decline in trade resulting from it. ‘The needless confusion that frustrates the ambitions of business and government alike in our county areas must end now,’ Mr Blond said. 

‘With Brexit on the horizon and our city-regions already benefiting from devolution, we can’t afford the waste and complication that the current system creates. ‘Single councils at the county scale are the future and we call on the Government to move rapidly to encourage them.’ Baroness Jane Scott, the leader of Wiltshire Council, said the move to a unitary authority in the county in 2009 had been a ‘great success’ and warned that counties which fail to follow its lead face ‘the real risk of … being left behind’.

 ‘Streamlining counties will contribute billions to the national economy and will be good for business,’ said Lady Scott, the County Councils Network’s spokeswoman on reform. ‘But the real winners are local residents who will benefit from improved public services, less bureaucracy, and access to more housing and facilities that meet local need and demand.’ 

The report will be launched at the County Council Network’s annual conference on November 20. A spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government said: ‘Moving to a single tier large unitary authority can often give residents a better deal for their local taxes, improved local services, less bureaucracy and stronger and more accountable local leadership. ‘However, we are clear that any such move must be both locally led and have support from the community.’

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2017/11/17/could-this-be-the-end-of-borough-and-district-councils-7086145/?ito=cbshare

Author: George Kerevan, The National

IT’S festival time in Edinburgh again. Forget all the minor irritations: the incessant swarms of folk far younger than I’ll ever be again; the worry that you are bound to miss the best show, no matter how many events you squeeze in; the occasional run-in with some Metropolitan arse who thinks they are visiting the colonies; and the bar queue at Summerhall. But still, the festival is a reminder that life is not bounded by the neoliberal injunctions to work, consume and make a profit for greedy banks. For a brief few weeks I can pretend I’m not trapped in a post-Brexit Little England.

I know some feel the Edinburgh Festival – Fringe, Official, Books, Comedy and whatever – is alien to Scotland. But here’s my point: most of what happens during the Festival is not driven by corporate interests or the Brit media. The Fringe remains a vast artistic experiment powered only by youthful hope, ambition and the willingness to live in a squat for three weeks.

The Book Festival, chaired by the journalist Allan Little rather than some philistine banker, provides a ferment of debate, political and cultural. And there is much that is local, including a mini-political festival organised by Yes Edinburgh.

There’s a reason this happens in Edinburgh and not Manchester or Bristol. The Festival, from its inception in 1947 during the darkest days of post-war austerity, has always been genuinely international. Meanwhile down south, mainstream contemporary English culture – from Brexit to the BBC – is still suffused with insular, imperial nostalgia. True, Edinburgh lives in a state of creative tension with its festival. But Scotland has always been a European culture open to global influences – which is why that original Edinburgh Festival of 1947 was brave enough to unite conductor Bruno Walter with the Vienna Philharmonic in an act of reconciliation with our former Second World War enemies.

If you want to complain about the limits to cultural expression in Scotland, look closer to home than the Edinburgh Festival. After quitting that great comedy show at Westminster, I decided to recharge my cultural batteries – not to say faith in humankind as creative beings. So I’ve gone back to my earlier career as a film-maker, working with my friend Samir Mehanovic, one of Europe’s most exciting directors. The downside is having to deal with a Scottish funding bureaucracy more concerned with ticking boxes and spouting impenetrable business jargon than getting anything made.

Fortunately, I’ve returned just in time for one of the periodic revolts by the arts community against this funding bureaucracy, manifested in the shape of Creative Scotland, whose chief executive, Janet Archer, recently resigned following uproar at a botched attempt to cut funding to some of the country’s most respected arts organisations.

Why does the arts community keep rebelling against Scotland’s main public funding agency? When the incoming (and minority) SNP government inherited Labour’s plan for Creative Scotland back in 2010, it also inherited a Blairite model for managing arts organisations. This involves treating arts bodies as business centres that must deliver a measurable financial return, rather than a cultural one. One cardinal rule of the Blairite model is to appoint senior business folk – bankers to the fore – to chair the supervisory boards of cultural institutions. The theory is that these people have the experience and hard-headedness to run big organisations that flighty artistic people lack. Though why you would assume that bankers – whose serial incompetence and manic greed almost brought the Western economies to collapse in 2008 – should be put in charge of our cultural jewels beats me.

For instance, Creative Scotland’s very first chair (appointed in 2010 by the new Scottish government) was Sir Sandy Crombie, former chief exec of Standard Life and an alumnus of RBS, where he was a senior board member during the disastrous tenure of Fred Goodwin. The board of RBS singularly failed to oversee Fred the Shred, whose arrogance led to the virtual destruction of the bank.

In an echo of history, Sandy Crombie quit the board of Creative Scotland in 2014, after that body’s first chief executive, Andrew Dixon, had to resign following massive criticism by the Scottish arts community. But Dixon was merely following Crombie’s well-known injunction that Scottish cultural bodies had to show – in his own words – “a return on investment”. This from a businessman who was a director of RBS when it lost billions of pounds annually.

The grip over Scottish culture by the bankers and other pillars of the establishment goes wider than Creative Scotland. The current chief trustee of the National Museums of Scotland is Bruce Minto of Dickson Minto of Charlotte Square, one of the UK’s leading corporate law practices specialising in mergers and acquisitions and in private equity. Dickson Minto has a close strategic alliance with the New York-based law practice of Willkie Farr & Gallagher, who ran the disastrous RBS take-over of ABN AMRO in 2007.

Previous chairs of the National Museums include Angus Grossart, former vice-chair of RBS, and Lord Smith of Kelvin, he of the infamous Smith Commission. Smith was previously chief executive of Deutsche Bank Asset Management and also had a stint as a BBC governor. I’m not suggesting taxpayers’ cash should be handed out willy-nilly. I am saying that cultural production (and therefore cultural funding) is central to what a nation is and can be. Internal Scottish self-confidence and external recognition as a distinct nation are determined by our ability to express ourselves through film, music, drama and art.

Yet in slew of areas, we are uniquely limited in that self-expression as a result of the current funding model. And by the domination in arts management of bankers rather than of talented Scots from diverse backgrounds who have a genuine interest in their own culture.

Consider this, for instance. In the modern era, TV dominates popular access to political and cultural narratives. Yet Scotland – almost alone of Europe’s smaller nations – is bereft of direct access to its own television in any measure. We have BBC Scotland, which is a pathetic appendage of its parent. And we have tiny STV which has just closed its local TV network having overpaid for the franchise deliberately to exclude Scottish newspapers from entering broadcasting. Sweden has seven non-commercial channels and Denmark has dozens of local channels.

Our limited TV domestic market has consequences. Instead of making home-produced, home-written dramas, as the Scandinavian countries do, Scotland has become a cheap, offshore base for the US-concocted Outlander series. OK, Outlander is giving work to practically the entire Scottish film community. But the cult series is Hollywood in tartan drag, not real Scottish movie-making. Instead of handing out much of the Scottish Government’s new £20 million film fund to foreign companies, we should take risks and fund 15 or 20 independent Scottish movies. That would create a genuine production base instead of us being US television lackeys.

How we fund the arts in Scotland is as much about politics as culture. We need to control our own narrative. That alone should define where we put cultural funding. If we don’t control our own narrative, then we can’t complain if London does it for us. Enjoy the Festival.

Author: CLS

Top tips and myth  busters from Community Land Scotland – Click here

Author: Judy Wilkinson, CommonSpace

Allotments campaigner Judy Wilkinson says there is now an opportunity to make allotments part of a movement disrupting the present to make a future where community life, healthy living, local democracy and the natural world are intertwined through the allotment in every part of Scotland

The Cambridge dictionary definition of ‘disruptor’ is a person or thing that prevents something, especially a system, process, or event, from continuing as usual or as expected.

Can allotments and the allotment movement become part of this force for change? Can they change the traditional attitudes in local authorities in a new and effective way? Are plot-holders already at the forefront of a new movement that recognises our need to re-engage with the natural world, change our food system, re-think our attitude to health and our awareness of climate change?

The Scottish Government is trying to bring about change at a grassroots level with, among other legislation,  the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act and the consultation on Democracy Matters. The old Allotment (Scotland) Acts were re-written in  Part 9 (Allotments) of the CEA and after two years the Guidance for local authorities on this is out for consultation.  There was a new approach to writing this with the establishment of a Tripartite Group consisting of representatives from the Scottish Government, local authorities and the Scottish Allotments and Gardens Society (SAGS) , to “develop constructive dialogue surrounding Part 9, and monitor the early stages of implementation”. It puts ‘Grow Your Own’ (GYO) in the context of some of the Scottish Government’s National Outcomes, National Indicators and UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The Guidance contains a really impressive list of possibilities that could indeed act as a strong disruptive force…but how can this actually happen?  What drivers are needed? How do we avoid unintended consequences?  Will the local authorities grasp the opportunities and use the duties and powers to the full? How do we ensure that the benefits of allotments are understand by the local authorities and by people in communities who have never grown their own food or even visited an allotment site and talked to the plot-holders?

Allotments are for everyone, for people living in tenements, in rural areas, cities and settlements who do not have large gardens or rolling acres. There is diversity and choice with not just one model for growing spaces – some are formal, ‘traditional’ allotments but many have community plots for groups from the local area, forest gardens, wild areas, orchards and children’s play spaces. They can be a focus for the local community with a hut for schools, meetings and events. Many are sanctuaries where people feel part of the cycle of growing and decay that is the spiritual base of our lives.

However there has always been a struggle to ensure allotments are respected and that everyone has the right to a patch of land to cultivate.  A hundred years ago the Scottish National Union of Allotment Holders was formed, later becoming SAGS; a group of passionate, committed people who have campaigned, fought and struggled to make sure that everyone who wants to share their love and passion can have a patch of land to cultivate. They campaigned for the original Allotment (Scotland) Acts in 1922 and 1950.

However, unintended consequences followed the 1950 legislation when the Housing (Scotland) Act 1950 was passed. The number of plots fell from about 70,000 to around 6,000 as sites were taken for development. Yes, people need housing but developments can and should co-exist with allotments and other growing spaces to ensure a good quality of life for everyone. If the earlier Acts had been implemented instead of trumped by the housing acts; if there had been vision and passion from the powers-that-be in the twenties and fifties, then we would not have today’s barren, concrete jungles with lack of hope and resulting despair. This disregard must not happen again. The new legislation must fulfil the promise so the quality of life found in allotments is at the core of our society.

As part of local democracy,  allotments have survived in Scotland for over 150 years, a microcosm of community life with people working together, sharing skills, negotiating disputes and disagreements. They are embedded in the culture of the local area, evolving as families, minority groups, friends and community groups take plots. There is now an opportunity for this energy and passion to spread.

The local authorities have the power to work with local communities to make allotments an integral component of successful place-making and local development plans. If officers concerned with the food growing strategy, planning, equality and diversity, and economic development teams work together with relevant areas of the NHS such as Health Improvement and Facilities Management teams, then  GYO will be included through local participation in relevant local strategies such as social, health and wellbeing, education, environmental, economic, local outcome improvement plans, food poverty plan, and planning strategies.

Working together is not easy. Partnership and participation are worthy ideals but making it all work in practice requires a change in attitude and building the capability and capacity of everyone involved.  It could turn sour with people taking control through rules and regulations and through pressure to reduce waiting lists. Alternatively it could lead to new practices and connections developed from understanding the harmony achieved in nature. 

We have an opportunity. Working together the GYO movement through the new legislation and guidance could be a disruptive force that will bring the benefits of GYO across Scotland. The Tripartite group have worked hard to ensure that the Guidance supports the intention of Part 9. Please read and comment on the draft Guidance consultation so, acting together, we can really change the places we live in.

Author: COEP

The Community Organisers Expansion Programme – a national program to recruit and train 3,500 Community Organisers across England by March 2020. This program is an expansion of the Community Organiser Programme that ran between 2011 and 2015 that mobilised 6500 Community Organisers to inspire resident led social action in neighbourhoods across England.

The ultimate aim of the Programme is for residents to take action together in and across England’s most deprived neighbourhoods for social change – focused on the issues that matter most to them. 

The Programme Theory of Change identifies 5 outcomes which we are seeking to move achieve:

1.            A diverse range of social action & democratic engagement facilitated by people trained in organising.

2.            General recognition of the value of community organising (underpinned by COLtd’s framework) and use of its principles.

3.            A strong, active, inclusive, diverse, skilled, reflective, network of people trained in community organising, accountable to community organising values, their communities and the movement.

4.            Sustainability of community organising models and of COLtd as the home for neighbourhood community organising

5.            A progressive & high-quality CO training offer/package fully tested and widely available which incorporates practical skills, theoretical understanding & the action-reflection cycle.

Major Programme activities and outputs as agreed in the COEP Contract are:

·         Training 3500 people, 2000 through Social Action Hubs and 1500 through national and local partners

·         Employing Member Organisers to facilitate networking and recruit members

·         Supporting 20 Social Action Hubs to roll out training and embed community organising

·         Developing a curriculum of training from Introductory training through to Certificate or even Diploma level training

·         Growing the skills of experienced community organisers as trainers, mentors and assessors

Timeline of the Year

The COEP got going at a breakneck pace!

·         The Programme was procured by the Office for Civil Society (part of DCMS) in late 2016 when COLtd was appointed as the lead delivery partner but not officially launched at the beginning of March 2017.

·         A Learning Partner (Imagine) was immediately appointed and a draft Programme Theory of Change developed.

·         The delayed start led to pressure for very rapid recruitment of the first round of 10 Social Action Hubs and the 10 Member Organisers.

·         The Social Action Hub opportunity was publicised over just 2 weeks in March 2017.  Social Action Hubs were defined as locally rooted organisations supported by an Experienced Community Organiser. ‘Through training local leaders and volunteers at a neighbourhood level they will strengthen the networks of community organisers and be catalysts for resident led social action.’

·         10 Social Action Hubs were selected, and Grant Agreements issued by early April 2017 with first Quarterly Grant payments made towards the third week of April.  The Induction Day for Social Action Hubs took place on 2nd May 2017. This was immediately followed by a 2 day training for the Experienced Community Organisers working with each SAH: ‘Preparing to Train Community Organisers’ – an introduction to the initial One Day Introduction to Community Organising course which would be the first training offered by SAHs in their local areas as part of the COEP.

·         At the same time recruitment for the 10 Member Support Organisers was also under way. The MSO role was intended to ‘bring Community Organisers together from across neighbourhoods and support them to take collective action around their aspirations for the future of their communities’. The MSO role was advertised from early March and applications closed on March 17th and appointments were made by end of March 2017 with first grant payments made mid-April.  Induction took place in May with a training session on Peer Networking led by Shared Assets. Monthly online training sessions continued from this point.

·         10 further Social Action Hubs were recruited and appointed in June 2017 and induction took place in the second week of July.

·         Monthly action learning sets for Social Action Hub leads began and continued through the year.

·         5 strategic partners were signed up within the first three months – NCS Trust, Local Trust, Neighbourhood & Homewatch Network, VSO Overseas and Step up to Serve.

·         In June we ran our yearly conference – CO17, attended by 100 members and friends of COLtd.

·         In May the first one day course in community organising was accredited by Certa and the first training under the COEP took place in May in Croydon – a public Introduction to Community Organising course attended by 28 people.

·         Training by Social Action Hubs really got under way in Quarter 2 with 127 people attending Introduction to Community Organising courses between July and September 2017.

·         In June the Award and Certificate in Community Organising were formally accepted as Qualifications on the RQF Framework.

·         In August the new Programme Manager for the COEP started work having been recruited in June but unable to start sooner.

·         In September ECOs met to start planning the delivery of the Qualification in community Organising. They met again in November to design one day follow-up courses in listening, action and power.

·         In September we also developed and launched the Community Organising Framework which now underpins all of our training and teaching of Community Organising.

·         In Quarter 3,  265 people attended Introduction to Community Organising courses between July and September 2017.

·         In October we launched our Communications Toolkit , designed to support SAHs and members to gain more media coverage for their work .

·         In November we held a review session with our Member Organisers

·         In December we ran a three day ‘Preparing to Training Community Organisers’ training course for 19 members of COLtd – some based at Social Action Hubs and some independent or employed as COs elsewhere – to grow our network of quality assured trainers.

·         We also launched a Grant fund for SAHs to run targeted community organising training for young people. 9 SAHs were offered Grants to run training and provide support to young people aged 16-19.

·         We also welcomed the Director for Social Action at OCS to Pembroke House on Local Charities Day and used this as an opportunity to promote the network of Social Action Hubs.

·         In February we piloted some bespoke training with young people who are part of an NCS Graduate Board in planning social action and developing teamwork. 

·         In Quarter 4, 822 people attended Introduction to Community Organising courses between July and September 2017, including 137 young people and 150 people attending courses through local and national partners such as Community Links, Octopus, St Ethelberga’s and the Co-op Group.

·         We also held a residential for public sector workers which was attended by 18 people from 12 institutions, mostly Councils.

·         In Quarter 4, our Lead for Internal Quality Assurance undertook training observations of 90% of our ECOs at Social Action Hubs as part of our commitment to quality assurance.

·         We completed and piloted the new course, Listening Skills for Community Organising and this was accredited by Certa.

·         A number of variations of the accredited Introduction to CO courses were approved by our Lead for Internal Quality Assurance. 

·         To complete the year we held a reflection event for all of the key partners in the Programme – Social Action Hubs, ECOs and Member Organisers to capture learning, share stories and review the Programme Theory of Change. This fed into the renegotiation of Grant Agreements for Social Action Hubs and a new approach to the member organiser agreements, which were changed from Grants to Contracts. 12 MO contracts were let for 2018-19.

·         By the end of the year we had trained 1242 individuals on one day courses and we had grown our membership to 424 members.