A Celebration of Community Wealth Building in Scotland
Friday, October 7, 2022, the local authority of North Ayrshire in the West of Scotland hosted the first Community Wealth Building Conference in the devolved nation as they celebrated two years of progress since North Ayrshire became the first Scottish authority to officially launch a Community Wealth Building strategy. The event brought together leaders and civil servants from local government in the region; officials from Scottish government, including the Minister for Community Wealth Building, Mr. Thomas Arthur, and representatives from local advocacy organizations.
When North Ayrshire launched their CWB strategy in May 2020, the world had just entered a global pandemic with the forthcoming recession and growing compounding environmental and social crises we are now in clearly looming on the horizon. The goal of the strategy was, and still is, to create a fair and resilient local economy, reducing poverty and inequality, for all residents – a goal that has only become increasingly more relevant and imperative. So much so that CWB is now central to the Scottish government’s economic policy agenda. North Ayrshire may have been an early adopter of CWB, but it is fast becoming mainstream economic thinking across the country – a way to truly deliver on the government’s commitment to building a Wellbeing Economy for all.
Setting out clear objectives in each of the five pillars of CWB, North Ayrshire’s strategy built on years of hard work with support from CLES and in consultation with The Democracy Collaborative, Matthew Brown, and experts in the field, and lay the ground for a transformation of local economic development practice rooted in CWB. From the outset, North Ayrshire set up a £3 Million Community Wealth Building Fund, capitalized from a £250 Million Pound Growth Deal for the combined Ayrshire authorities, to help institutionalize a CWB approach across the region and to direct the whole of the Growth Deal monies towards CWB related advancements.
In the years since then, North Ayrshire has made herculean strides to institutionalize CWB across their economic development policy and practice as a local authority but also across the region. To do so they have:
Created 10 new CWB staff position across government departments;
Established a CWB Commission made up of key local and regional anchor institutions who signed on to an Anchor Charter committing to pledges across all of the pillars of CWB;
Formed a Community Wealth Building Expert Panel to challenge and advise on the CWB implementation;
Released a Covid Recovery and Green New Deal plan rooted in CWB;
Convened all three of the local authorities to begin to develop a regional plan centring CWB;
Capitalized a £10.2 million Investment Fund to advance green jobs and to transition away from fossil fuel
All of these efforts have combined to produce tangible outcomes in all of the pillars of CWB – from increased local procurement and hiring to better use of land and assets for community outcomes. One great example is the creation of the forthcoming two solar photovoltaic farms on former landfills that will be operated as a municipal enterprise, creating green jobs for local residents, providing green energy to all local authority buildings, and returning energy to the grid at a profit that will then be reinvested into CWB efforts locally.
North Ayrshire’s CWB ambitions helped to inspire and influence the direction of economic policy for the whole of the nation of Scotland. As noted above, CWB is now central to the functioning of Scottish Government, and supported by the Economic Development Association of Scotland. They have imbedded Community Wealth Building directly into their National Strategy for Economic Transformation plan (NSET), supported a five area pilot for CWB across the country, appointed Mr. Arthur Minister for Public Finance, Planning, and Community Wealth Building, and will be introducing national CWB legislation later this fall.
The day-long event at a town hall in North Ayrshire was a celebration of these many accomplishments, but also a recognition of the great need at this time of crisis and the real challenge to do more, to be bold, and keep going. Mr Arthur opened the day placing CWB as a fundamental rewiring of the economy. The Democracy Collaborative staff, who have been involved in North Ayrshire and Scotland’s CWB journey for some time, contributed throughout the day alongside powerful presentations from practitioners and experts across the region. Ted Howard, contributing via video, lauded North Ayrshire and Scotland for their leadership, but exhorted that they need to build clear and intentional connections between local need and national priorities. Meanwhile, I emphasized that CWB is economic development, but it requires communities to own the process and be connected to each other. And finally, Neil McInroy, with both Scottish Government and the Democracy Collaborative, brought it all home with a new CWB dance encouraging everyone in the room to build from below and from above while connecting and augmenting in all directions!
Neil McInroy
One inspiring moment of the day was the release of a new movie created by local youth leaders profiling what CWB means to them in their daily lives. The newly elected head of North Ayrshire Council, Marie Burns, who follows Councillor Joe Cullinane who drove the authority’s early CWB adoption, introduced the video and spoke to the transformative capacity of CWB. But this will only be achieved if local leaders, activists, community groups, institutions, and residents think and act systemically. Despite political transitions and in the face of greater and greater need in this era of crisis, we all must continue the dogged work to link up, scale, embed, support, resource, and innovate local community-owned solutions so that they can truly disrupt and displace the extractive economy now.
North Ayrshire may have been the first CWB council in Scotland, but it is certainly not the last, with places like Clackmannanshire and the Western Isles fast on their heels. It is a marvelous example of the potential of a CWB approach that is bold enough to make a real, lasting impact in the daily lives of people, young and old. But it should not and cannot be an exception in a global movement for change.
I, for one, can’t wait to see what else is in store for Community Wealth Building in Scotland.
