Scotland: National Rural NetworkThe Alness Initiative have achieved much in the past thirteen years. In this article you can find out about the various projects they are involved in, who's involved, their top tips for other communities and more.
What are the aims of your project?Over the past thirteen years, Alness Initiative have done several large projects in Alness in order to put Alness on the map, enhance our businesses and promote tourism in an area formerly ignored in the rush to come to the Highlands and turn West or drive straight through some of our best scenery to head for John 0' Groats.
Alness is 25 miles north of Inverness, just off the A9 on the Cromarty Firth.
The Alness Initiative was formed originally to supervise the improvements to Alness High Street. A committee was set up with two members of Alness Community Council, two Alness Business Association, two Alness Community Association, the local Highland Councillors, two representatives from Highland Council Development Department, a Ross And Cromarty Enterprise representative. They met every two weeks to bring the whole project forward and through a lot of discussion, and sometimes argument, Alness got the High Street it wanted.
After this a 'Shopping List' was drawn up of all the projects we wished to take forward to improve Alness. The floral displays started in 1997 when we won the Best Small Town in Scotland on our first try. After that we won 38 different awards culminating in Champion of Champions for Great Britain. We retired this year to give our volunteers a lighter load and are doing our main floral displays on High Street and throughout the town but not looking for new projects to improve it even further. Everything on our Shopping List was completed by 2006 and new projects were then discussed and are now going forward.
In 2001 parts of the Highlands were included in the European Northern Periphery Programme and Alness and Ardross, Nigg and the Seaboard Villages, Cromarty, Dingwall and Wester Ross were included in it. Through Highlands and Islands Enterprise we received money for Community Economic Development Officers for each area. Alness was lucky to procure Helen Houston, undoubtedly one of the best of them. Working with the community Helen helped the clubs and community bodies, improve their circumstances and helped get training money, equipment if necessary and money for improvements and art and environmental projects. In all over more than £1.3 million came to Alness in the seven years(approx) of the CED Project.
The greatest success and the biggest improvement made to Alness was probably the flowers although many other things made huge advances at the same time, e.g The Heritage Centre, The West End Hall, The Kensal Hall and the Averon Centre.
What's been the biggest challenge?The biggest challenge was to keep volunteers together to work through all these years. We had more than forty volunteers at the flowers and many individuals took on small areas around their homes to keep tidy and weeded as well. The Heritage Centre, West End Hall and Kensal Hall have all been run by volunteers from the start. Many parts of the community set up groups to clear their own areas and plant flowers, do litter clear ups and generally make a difference to their environment. Residents groups were formed in all the Housing Estates and they worked to help their householders improve their lot.
If other communities wished to emulate Alness, not necessarily with flower competitions or big projects but just to make their areas better, they could start by meeting together and just asking each other what they would like to see in their area. In many cases a litter pick on a Saturday morning with the Scouts and Brownies helping, planting a few bulbs on entrances to villages and towns, generally trying to make YOUR town a better place to live, and most of all trying to work together for a better environment to bring up your children in.
The Alness Web Site is http://www.alness.com/ where you can see pictures and the history of Alness.
If you wish to get in touch contact us at alness@alness.com.
The Alness Initiative is just one of the case studies in the COSLA and Scottish Government Community Empowerment Action Plan.
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