Rural Community Gateway

Geoff Fagan,

I live in a fairly remote rural community and was interested to see mention of community empowerment and group work.
I was wondering what information, models exist re community meetings and the force of differing personalities, interests, ego needs, negativities (here folk talk of N.E. negativity), for when things get difficult. We also, as a community, have a history of meeting very well and positively, too.

Part of the difficulty local groups experience in working together is just what you describe. They think that a challenge to an idea is a personal attack on them; they are not given enough information in a way that is understandable in order to make a contribution and they are treated, by professionals and those more expert at committee work than they are, as being stupid.

Some of the difficulties are associated with understanding how committee procedure works. I know that the procedures and processes of committee meetings can be dreadful. However, in that very process lays the answer to many questions. The bully that is determined to get his or her way can be controlled by procedure.

A skilful Chair can bring all views and opinions to the table – and so on. So, knowing and being able to use committee procedures effectively is a key element in bringing people to the heart of the process. There is no substitute for knowing how committees work and it is so simple to find out.

Whilst working in the States recently, we moved our committee procedure from one which was based on what they called ‘Roberts Rules’ to a process of ‘stand-in or stand aside’ where we don’t work our way turgidly through mountains of matters arising and agenda items to a process where early agreement can be tested, positions stated and explained and a vote taken very quickly if consensus is reached. If you look on the  International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) website there is evidence of a procedure there which may be of interest.

Many rural communities now have Community Development Trusts which employ project officers to undertake economic and social development projects within their community. How do you see these organisations developing in the future and what relationship do you see developing with public sector organisations also working in this field such as Highland and Islands Enterprise and Scottish Enterprise?

At this time, Community Development Trusts are a way ahead that enables real community development to take place which is locally driven, responds to local agendas and which is under the control of local people. Until they are superseded by an organisational structure that holds the same potential for the same things, they will remain of critical importance to local people who want to find local solutions to local problems or aspirations.

The last time I had a serious discussion with anyone from Highlands and Island Enterprise (HIE) they described sustainable development as being a burden on local people. To give them their due, this was one person and about six years ago, so perhaps the institutional view was different at the time and HIE is now in step with everyone else.

The Scottish Executive is harder to call. The Executive’s Rural Voices initiative (RV:ARC) was unique in the way that it brought the Executive, its skill bank and resources close to the needs of people living across rural Scotland. Unfortunately, the evaluation completed after the pilot programme concluded, has yet to be released. This is a pity as Rural Voices, I believe, indicated a new way, a new relationship between the Executive and local people in rural Scotland.

As to the future of Community Development Trusts, they cannot be allowed to work in isolation. They are not a substitute for Community Councils. They do a different job and, in small part they are a response to a weak Community Council structure. Without a fundraising ability, with access to very few resources and very little political clout, Community Councils are struggling to properly represent the affairs of their locality with any authority.

At this time, Community Development Trusts do hold the potential to drive local mandated development forward, they can raise funding (they have huge fundraising potential) and have a legal structure that will keep local people protected. Until the legislation changes, and there is no sign of that yet, they will remain the key players in sustainable community development into the future.

Could Geoff please advise me why Scotland seems unprepared to fly the ecotourism flag while other nations with equally spectacular natural wonders such as New Zealand, Canada, Costa Rica etc. do so proudly?

Tourism: you either love it or hate it. For rural Scotland, tourism is a crucial component in enabling the lights to stay on in villages throughout the winter. It’s money in the bank that helps survival from one summer to the next. Yet, for some of our most remote places, without the infrastructure to enable visitors to stop and spend, the only things they contribute are to the holes in the road. It sounds terribly mercenary doesn’t it?

As yet, you’re right, we haven’t latched on to the benefits that eco-tourism has brought to many other rural areas worldwide. Of course, there is still a debate raging (or better, smouldering) that seeks to clarify whether there is any such thing as ‘eco’ tourism. Some would say that what others call eco-tourism is simply tourism dressed up to attract a different kind of participant: nothing wrong in that. Perhaps it is this that has bogged us down – or perhaps organisations are reluctant to be labelled too environmentally friendly. If this is the case, it is serious.

If eco-tourism is defined as attracting an audience to an environmental and culturally sensitive experience in Scotland (which involves enhancing the unique Scottish landscape and Scottish view of the world whilst providing people living here with financial security based on a deeper ethical take than that of standard tourism), then this is an opportunity yet to be realised. I simply don’t know why people seem reluctant to grasp this particular nettle.

I do know that, for those living in the most remote circumstances, eco-tourism could provide a steady stream of sustained income that does not land there at this moment and could bring substantial, long term benefit to small local organisations and to the neighbourhoods in which they exist.

I agree therefore, we have yet to fully understand the contribution that eco-tourists make to both the economic regeneration of remote areas and to the developing discourse about sustainability, travel and tourism.

How can any sane person with a basic knowledge of simple arithmetic believe that any amount of giant wind turbines on our beautiful landscapes ever halt global climate change?

Social change is about altering perception, behaviour and attitudes. It necessarily means a movement in what we call here the dominant discourse: the formulae by which people, unconsciously, manage their lives.

In a very simple sense, the presence of wind turbines casting long shadows across our countryside is a daily reminder of the need to move to more sustainable energy generation processes.

Oil will peak: whether this happens in five years or twenty is immaterial and we will then be on the path to a steady decline in reliance on oil produced electricity from that moment onwards.

What options are therefore open to us? Is it inevitable that we continue our love and hate relationship with nuclear power – even though we know that the small but troublesome matter of the waste (and terrorist intervention) has yet to be addressed in any significant or acceptable fashion? We seem content to leave the solving of this particular puzzle to our children and perhaps their children.

Scotland has probably the largest store of alternative energy options of any European country. So the question therefore is: why are we not making sensible economic use of this amazing resource – particularly when each option helps us to get nearer to the Kyoto standards required of us?

The question is not that we cannot produce the energy we need from alternative sources, we can. It is much more to do with whether we would want to. The windfarm proposal on Lewis, now before the Scottish Executive is purported to hold the potential to supply a million homes with electricity. It isn’t that we cannot produce the electricity required – the question is whether we would wish to have hundreds of turbines, each 140 metre’s high, littering our landscape.

At the moment the debate is polarised and this needs to change. Local people see their landscape under threat. They do not see alternative energy as a way of making their own lives, and their family’s lives in the future, more sustainable. There seems to be no dialogue links between those in the developers camp who stand to make huge profits from each windfarm, those in the environmental camp who are rightly concerned about environmental impact and the third camp of local people.

In my experience, local people are mesmerised by both developers and environmentalists telling them diametrically opposite things – both with a passion. In these circumstances it is not surprising that local people may feel that attack is the best form of defence. We, surely, can do better than this.

Part of the discussion we need to have involves us thinking small and to ask each village and each person, all five million of us, to shoulder individually our share of the energy burden. To ask each of us to generate our own energy where we can and to minimise our own carbon emissions to such an extent that these massive, nationally driven schemes may not be so necessary. We need to do this anyway of course, but wouldn’t it be interesting if, as has been shown by the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) individualised carbon emission test, each family was willing to take up the challenge?

Don’t abandon your 4x4, have it converted to vegetable oil or go to B&Q and buy solar panels (for your house – not your car). It’s all there for the taking; it just needs one domino to fall. As oil dries up there will be a price to be paid by all of us.

In part, it will mean that the wild spaces of Scotland will be under threat like never before. So we need to debate and agree the price we are willing to pay to secure our energy needs for the immediate future, before this happens. Some of the wild areas, the most beautiful parts of Scotland will, without doubt, have to pay this price for us. The critical matter is that we debate and decide now - and not allow it to happen to us by default.

So, you don’t have to be insane to believe that wind turbines are the answer: they are part of the answer. However, if we don’t want all of our wild areas to be covered with these gentle giants, then we need to recognise the contribution each one of us can make to resolving this emerging crisis – and then to make it, now.

Highland museums traditionally struggle to make a surplus. What advice would you have for a small museum occupying an historic building (currently also housing craft/retail units) which is seeking to expand? Our desire to create a sustainable business and additional training opportunities within our community has not yet found favour with any lottery or other funder.

Last week (December 2006), CADISPA ran a training session for one of the big charitable funders that wanted to know, by using sustainability criteria, how they could choose which project to support. They were faced with a multitude of proposals each year asking for similar things: money and quickly please. What emerged from the discussion was interesting.

In a simple sense, a project that fails to attract other sponsors (social, medical or environmental etc.) will struggle to get support. They didn’t want to know about the building’s history or construction – but how the building contributed to the whole neighbourhood: how many jobs did it intend to supply? What is meant by you being an educational or social unit? And so on. They did want to know what special circumstances your centre met and whether anyone else was meeting similar needs within a few miles of you? Was your need for money to do with ‘want’ or ‘need’ and to what extent?

They were interested, too, in others sharing a portion of the building (or the site with you). They wanted to see what flexible futures you have planned for yourself, how you have made the building able to meet the needs of your locality as the needs of those living there changed over time. Simple things like how can the building be divided and can the heating of the building be directed only to those areas in use.

They wanted to know whether the finances taken at the door were sufficient to cover, not only the programme but the longer term maintenance schedules that are necessary. Were there any other activities (not perhaps located on the same site) which contributed regularly to the operational underpinning of the building? Was there a register of friends who, for two copies of a broadsheet a year – were willing to support the project whilst knowing that what they received was worth 50p rather than the £25 they had (willingly) paid to be a ‘friend’ of the organisation.

My suggestion would be to talk to those people who have been successful in winning money from the funding agencies you suggested. There are a multitude of examples and contact details on the CADISPA website. There is no magic wand here but talking to those people who have been successful will, I’m sure, help.

My question to Geoff Fagan as a community councilor and company secretary of our Community Trust – in our community and typically there are some residents who show no interest in being involved in community affairs, they use the village as a base, commute into work and have family and social life away from the village. (Lots of volunteer time has been spent trying to engage people.) This reduces the number of local interactions, something I see as critical in keeping a sense of community. Is there a tipping point at which a place ceases to be a community and becomes a dormitory?

I think we are clinging to a definition of community that is, at best, outdated. To think that people now recognise their place as the defining element in their sense of community is simply no longer the case.

The sense of belonging necessary to define community means that Community Councillors and others (Directors of Community Trusts) have to approach individuals on a different basis. This is not a dilution of mutual values and to the commitment to solidarity, but it is a recognition, as in times before, that it is individuals that make up communities and it is individuals, working together around a specific project(s), for a limited time and to an end that not only services a collective need – but also their individual need, that will be successful.

The tipping point is that moment when individuals, or collections of individuals, share a common vision for the immediate future, recognise a project as being of interest and concern to them – and assess whether they have the time and energy (against a huge load of competing demands) to get involved.

Historically, one of the key limiting factors in this is the expectation that they will be asked to become involved in a project that will be run inefficiently, will be exasperating, full of petty politics and with people on the team that have sat on every group since 1908 and who want to reminisce ad nausea. Address some of these issues and people will walk towards a project rather than run away from it.

To answer your question directly: change the definition of community, sharpen the pencil in terms of getting busy people involved in neighbourhood activities, appeal to individuals, allocate jobs in bite size chunks and within a tight time framework – in other words recognise the constraints of the people who can only serve for a limited time period but who want to help, then you may have a recipe for success. Trying to attract people on the basis that it is their duty or into a flabby, unspecified contract of low level service with little hope of success or achievement – and for which they will take untold criticism – is an expectation too far.

To be absolutely frank, there is little point in formally engaging in local affairs for most people. This too needs to be addressed. In our experience, Community Councils are toothless institutions with little resources and which attract unskilled but budding politicians who use other good, well-intentioned people as their own political sounding board. This is not the fault of Community Councils. Until the Councils are given real status, and until each Councillor recognises that she or he must earn constantly the respect of the people they represent, few sane people will be attracted to serve on them for any length of time. As I’m sure you will recognise, I feel that there is a need for immediate structural change here.

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