Episodes
Monday Nov 13, 2023
Monday Nov 13, 2023
Our Story Weaver, Kaska Hempel, talks to Catherine Lawson, one of the volunteers behind Bonnie Dundee (In Your Neighbourhood) group.
Credits
Interview, recording and sound production: Kaska Hempel
Transcript
See SCCAN website https://sccan.scot/blog/everyday-changemakers-catherine-lawson-bonnie-dundee-iyn/
Resources
Audio tour of Dundee Community Garden Network (DRAFT): https://izi.travel/en/browse/ff0a9bcf-009d-4c1d-baaf-19e3e1d7e056/en
Bonnie Dundee Facebook https://www.facebook.com/BonnieDundeeBloom/
Bonnie Dundee Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bonniedundeebloom/
Bonnie Dundee website https://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/service-area/neighbourhood-services/environment/beautiful-scotland/bonnie-dundee
Bonnie Dundee IYN (It’s Your Neighbourhood) write up on Keep Scotland Beautiful
https://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/community-and-place/its-your-neighbourhood/find-out-more-and-take-part-in-its-your-neighbourhood/2023-entrants/bonnie-dundee-iyn/
A map of groups and places participating in Beautiful Scotland and It’s Your Neighbourhood (IYN) https://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/community-and-place/its-your-neighbourhood/beautiful-scotland-and-its-your-neighbourhood-map/
The Art-Science Orchard at the back of the Science Centre/Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre https://dundeeurbanorchard.net/art-science-orchard/
Dundee Urban Orchard (DUO) https://dundeeurbanorchard.net/about/
Pocket Gardens at Slessor Gardens, Dundee (Bonnie Dundee takes care of ‘Reflections of the Tay’) https://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/service-area/city-development/slessor-gardens
Urban rewilding projects at Dundee Botanics https://www.dundee.ac.uk/projects/rewilding-dundee
Dundee Botanics - Urban Arboretum https://www.dundee.ac.uk/corporate-information/botanic-garden-and-grounds-strategy
Interview with Kevin Frediani about the Botanic Garden’s role in future-proofing Dundee’s green spaces https://youtu.be/hXGuLwSFtg0?si=K1Df5oU0DjA5a-QQ
Monday Nov 06, 2023
Monday Nov 06, 2023
Kathi Kamleitner reports on her summer visit to the Wild Seas Weekend in Argyll and the Seawilding project which is fast becoming a template for community-led marine regeneration efforts around Scotland’s coastline.
This story was funded through our mini-grant programme. Get in touch on stories@sccan.scot if you are considering applying for one.
Kathi’s publishing a sister Seawilding story on her own podcast Wild for Scotland this week - see the link in the Resource section to listen.
Credits
Interview and recording: Kathi Kamleitner
Co-production, editing and sound design: Fran Turauskis
Resources
Seawilding website: https://www.seawilding.org/
"Long Time Coming" episode on Kathi's Wild for Scotland podcast https://www.wildforscotland.com/seagrass-restoration-loch-craignish/
Coastal Communities Network website: https://www.communitiesforseas.scot/
Argyll Hope Spot website: https://argyllhopespot.scot/
CROMACH website: https://www.cromach.org/
What's a Marine Protected Area: https://www.nature.scot/professional-advice/protected-areas-and-species/protected-areas/marine-protected-areas/scotlands-marine-protected-area-network
Seawilding on the Rewild Podcast: https://pod.link/1668050136/episode/c4660a0178b228b228ffb1be3263127f
Film about Seawilding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tid73gH2i
Transcript
The first time I snorkelled through a seagrass meadow was in a quiet corner of a sea loch near the village of Tayvallich. I was one of eleven people participating in the snorkelling artist residency hosted by the Argyll Hope Spot.
The seagrass meadow I saw that day was a bustling hub of biodiversity. Deep-black brittle stars wrapped their lanky arms around blades of seagrass or long strings of sea spaghetti.
Scallops shells littered the seafloor. Many were empty and long abandoned by the creatures that built them, but I also spotted living scallops as they sifted water through the narrow opening between their shells. On their outside, pink serpulid worms peeked out of their white tubes, spreading their fan-shaped crowns towards me. But as I moved closer and they noticed my presence. The worms closed the lids at the end of their tubes and the scallops sealed their shells shut. And in an instant, life was hidden from my sight.
A little further, I spot a green shore crab scuttling away and hiding beneath a tumble of seaweed. On the tips of the seagrass, I spot juvenile snakelock anemones, their green tentacles blending in with the fresh green of the meadow. But their purple tips give them away as they sway from side to side in the movement of the sea.
And I knew that everywhere around me, magnificent creatures are hiding in the thicket of the seagrass, whether I could see them or not.
Snorkelling in his vibrant habitat in Argyll, was the beginning of my learning journey about seagrass meadows and the benefits they bring to coastal ecosystems underwater and above the surface.
I learnt that they were once much more abundant in Scottish waters. Research estimates that we have lost about 90% of Scotland’s seagrass meadows, but in places where they are given a chance they recover, they can inspire new hope in the face of the climate crisis.
Back in August, this journey took me to the village of Ardfern, some 20 miles north of where I first encountered seagrass meadows.
Here, on the shores of Loch Craignish, a local community-led marine restoration project, called Seawilding, is working to bring seagrass meadows and native oyster beds back to the rugged Argyll coastline.
I’m here to attend the Wild Seas Weekend, a two-day event that showcases some of the work being done in this region by Seawilding and other nature conservation charities and organisations. The village hall is bustling and across the two days, I meet many people who are passionate about the sea and the coast. I speak with students who research the effects of marine sound pollution and let a volunteer show me bits of seagrass under a microscope. I look at the rubber model of a flapper skate that covers an entire table, and drop my jaw as I find out it’s actually life-size. I speak to folks who restore coastal oakwoods and watch as a handful of oysters clean the muddy seawater inside a tank over the course of the day.
I join guided snorkel and paddleboarding sessions to see the seagrass meadows up close, And follow Seawilding founder, Danny Renton, and several volunteers to the shoreline at low tide, to hear about survey strategies and their native oyster release programme.
At the end of the first day of the festival, I sit down with Philip Price, who is the Communications Manager for Seawilding. I ask him how Seawilding grew out of the local community and how their work in turn impacts the people who live and work in this area.
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[Interview with Philip Price]
Philip: So that's a very good question. So when we say it's a community led charity, it's because it's been built from the community and it employs the community. We're all, we all live here and we've all started working for Seawilding, but how that came about.
So, um, about eight years ago, we started an organization called CROMACH. Which is the Craignish Restoration of Marine and Coastal Habitat, which I'm always quite impressed I can remember it. Um, and basically what that did is it gave the community a voice on how we manage our inshore waters. Because prior to that, prior to a lot of, a lot of like minded people doing this, is that the only people that were giving voice to the local community in terms of how we manage our inshore waters were the commercial operations, so your fish farmers, your, your, um, fishermen, your creelers. Now, they should have a voice, but they certainly shouldn't be the only voice. And for a long time, they were the only voice influencing political decisions. Uh, and that's led to a really badly designed management system for our inshore waters. And that has resulted to catastrophic declines in virtually all our commercial fish species.
So we came up with CROMACH as an antidote to that. To say, listen, we live by the sea, we work in the sea, we're not a commercial operation in terms of exploiting the sea, but we should still have a say in how our sea, because I'm swimming in the sea every day, I take my kids in the sea every day, I would like to have a say in how my home is run.
Um, the problem with that is, We ended up doing, and it's very important work, but we ended up doing lots of consultations. Um, lots of talking to people, lots of saying no, we don't think that's a good idea. We don't want another fish farm. We don't want dredgers to come into our loch. And that's fine, and it's important, and it gets the conversation going, and then somebody has to take a balanced decision, you know, balancing up the economic interest, the jobs, and the impact on the environment.
The problem with you as a volunteer doing that is, it's very hard to see the light at the end of that tunnel. And there is light at the end of that tunnel, I'm sure of it, but we needed something more positive than that. We needed to kind of have something that we could really get our teeth into and go, we are making a difference.
Um, and that's why we wanted to start Seawilding. So, one of our community decided to, uh, trial an oyster, uh, restoration project. Got a bit of funding, that was Danny, our CEO. Uh, when that was successful, he then came up with the branding Seawilding. Um, we separated from CROMACH, because CROMACH was just a, a group.
Uh, and we, and he created a, a SCIO, a charity, which meant we'd get proper funding, employ people. We were all doing voluntary work for Seawilding when it started out and then gradually we got some part time work And we gave up our previous businesses and jobs and become full time now.
Kathi: That's fantastic and I think with what you're saying about being part of that decision making process and even though you don't have an Immediate or direct commercial interest in it.
You should still be part of that conversation because it's your home. Coastal communities are obviously Especially in Scotland, but also around the world, affected by climate change in a different way than, um, people who live in the cities that are maybe further away from the sea or higher up, um, in the mountains as well.
Because of course we've, you notice the sea level, because of course you notice the sea level rising way before we will, um, a bit further away. And I think... That's probably one of the reasons why it's also so important for coastal communities to be actively engaged in that. Is there anything you would add? Like, why is it so important for coastal communities to be involved in that conversation?
Philip: Well, what you said, I couldn't say any better, so I completely agree with that. But also, we have to pick up the pieces. You know, we're the one on the beach picking up all the rubbish from the fish farm and the, and the gloves that are thrown over the side from fishing vessels.
Um, and I'm not saying we shouldn't have fishing. I'm not saying that at all. But, you know, often communities are left to, to, to mop up. Um, you know, if, if there's a toxic algae bloom in the loch, it's our pets that are going to suffer. Our dogs that go in the water. It's our kids that are splashing around in it.
If there's, um, if, if, if, if, I run a tourism business, or I have a self catering accommodation, or I run a hotel, and there's nothing for anyone to see when they come up and visit, because all the dolphins have disappeared because they're using, uh, acoustic deterrents. Then, or there's no fish for them to eat.
That has direct impacts on our, on our lives. Um, so we have to have a say, otherwise coastal communities will break down, because the fishermen and, and the commercial interests of the sea are in decline because they've overfished it. We don't have the fish stocks we used to because they didn't manage it correctly.
So it has to be done in a different way and the only way you're going to get done in a different way is not by relying on the same voices to tell you how to do it. So you need new voices and that's why I think it's absolutely vital communities have a voice in how their home is being looked after.
Kathi: That's a great way to put it and probably something that could be said about many things in the world in just the right way. Thinking about renewable energy conversations and things like that as well.
Philip: Yes, most definitely.
Kathi: Um, Why seagrass?
What makes seagrass so important and what role does it play within Scotland?
Philip: So seagrass is one of these incredible, sort of, keystone species they call it. Basically, it just means it's really important for a whole load of other animals to survive and thrive. And why is that? Well there's a couple of things going on there.
So if you can imagine the seabed as this sandy bottom. It's very flat and it doesn't have very much structure. So... To enable animals to get shelter, or to get food, or for things to grow on things, Um, you need, you need structure. Particularly in the sea actually, that's why you always get loads of life around.
Um, uh, pontoons or boats, whatever. Um, so by planting seagrass, you create this incredible 3D structure in an otherwise sandy based seabed. But the other thing seagrass does is it draws carbon in from the atmosphere and, and sequests it into the sediment. So you've got the bonus of more habitat for loads of different species, including...
Lots of juvenile commercial fish species and you have this kind of carbon sucking ability as well.
Kathi: And that's because it photosynthesizes, right? Like a tree up on land, that's what the seagrass does under water.
Philip: Yeah, yeah. So unfortunately, um, I'm not, I'm not a scientist. I don't know the exact ins and outs of it, but the general gist as I understand it, is it, it, it's slightly different to a tree.
So a tree pulls carbon out of the atmosphere and creates wood essentially, or grows leaves. Um... There's something goes on with the seagrass that it does that too, but it also feeds the carbon into the sediment through its rhizome structure, which is its root structure and That means the carbon is locked away.
So even if the plant dies the carbon doesn't get released So so long as you don't go and dredge the seabed then that carbon stays locked away forever Well for for as good as ever in terms of a human lifetime and so it's really exciting from that perspective
Kathi: and seagrass in Scotland then specifically Is there a lot of it around?
Um, I assume that a lot of it has been lost as well, otherwise you wouldn't be doing the work that you're doing.
Philip: Yeah, so, so we think, and the science has kind of, um, has led us to this, this thinking, that we think that around the coast of the UK, roughly 95% of the seagrass has been lost. Some people think it's between 60 and 95%, but certainly when we've surveyed the seabed here to identify how much seagrass we could have, In terms of suitable sediment and depth.
And we've compared it to what seagrass we do have. We find we're about 5% of what we could have. And that is why we're really passionate about trying to improve that 5% to a lot more.
Kathi: Yeah, and so you've mentioned dredging as one of the things that might damage seagrass meadows. Is there anything else that you think has happened?
And why we now have so much less sea meadows, seagrass meadows?
Philip: Yeah, so, so, um, so dredging, they used to specifically There's lots of different types of dredge, and you can dredge to clear rivers, dredge for scallops. The, the problem with dredging for scallops, it doesn't often clear the seagrass out, but it creates these plumes of sediment that smothers seagrass and makes it vulnerable to disease.
So that's one problem, but then in some places they specifically dredge the seagrass to clean the beaches and make it nicer for people to go in the water. So that, those are the pressures that have resulted in seagrass disappearing. The other thing is, uh, anchorages, yacht centres, like, like we're sitting in front of here.
Um, pollution events, these all weaken the seagrass and then they become vulnerable to disease which can wipe out big, large chunks of seagrass, uh, bed. So, it's probably a massive variety of different things.
Kathi: And now let's move on to the other species you work with, the native oysters. Again, can you explain what they are and why they're so important?
Philip: So it's a very similar story there. So, so the native oyster is a mollusc, essentially a snail with a, with a slightly different shell. Um, and it's very easy to dismiss that as a, as a snail, but actually And the same with people that study snails. When you get into these animals, they're so fascinating. The fact that this little blobby thing can create a shell that's totally bomb proof is pretty incredible.
But they do the same thing as seagrass. They create structure in an environment that would be lacking structure otherwise. So... Oysters like to grow on oysters. So if you've got a really healthy reef, what happens is the baby oysters grow on the adult oysters. They become adults. So you've then got two levels.
And then the next, like, generation growing that, you've got three levels. So you end up having multiple levels of oysters, which allows lots of nooks and crannies and surface area for all sorts of animals to, to live and exist in. So from that perspective, oysters are... incredible. Um, but then they do this other thing that the seagrass doesn't do is and they filter the water, they clean the water, they takes, they take nutrients out of the water and allow the water to be clearer.
And actually we find that has a nice benefit for the seagrass because it lets more light in and hopefully will benefit our seagrass in the future too.
Kathi: So it's really about restoring an ecosystem not just individual species.
Philip: Yeah, so when you're a person from Homo sapien We're very good at trying to concentrate on one thing at a time and unfortunately ecosystems just don't work like that.
Um, and we're only learning that now. So instead of conserving a beetle or conserving a tiger, you've got to think ecosystem level now. And that's why we're restoring the seagrass and the oysters because we believe that's the bedrock of an ecosystem. Rather than saying, right, we want to restore herring or juvenile cod.
It's like, well, We're hoping they'll do that themselves once we've built the foundation for where they can have their young and rear their young.
Kathi: Absolutely. Oh, that makes so much sense. And, um, we've seen today in the village hall an example of how efficient oysters are at cleaning water. You had a tank set up with...
A handful of oysters chucked in basically and some seagrass as well and when I arrived in the morning you could barely see anything in it because the water was so mucky and silty I guess and now as we left it was completely clear and you could just see every detail and that's all the oysters, right?
Philip: Yes, exactly what they're doing. And that, so you think, so you think, this is really interesting. So that's actually the first time I've seen that demonstration done, even though I've been working with Seawilding now for a couple of years. And, uh, I've read about it and I knew they did that, but to actually see it is mind blowing.
And then you, then you think about the world that we live in now compared to the world we could live in. The world we live in now, we have maybe, I don't know, Half a million oysters around the whole country, maybe? I don't know. In little pockets of population. Compare that to two or three hundred years ago.
We would have had billions of oysters. Literally covering our shorelines. Think about how much of that tank has been cleaned in just a couple of hours. They're doing that to our entire ocean. So the clarity of the water back then must have been phenomenal. And I think that's what drives us forward.
Is like, imagining this pristine, almost utopian sea that we can have again if we just change a few things and fix a few things.
Kathi: That's amazing and it's, it's so inspiring to think. It's, it is about that big picture thinking and that future vision but it is within reach.
Philip: Oh yeah.
Kathi: It's not just something that happens in 300 years.
Philip: Yeah and I think that's, that's That's one of the nice things about the sea particularly so on land your time scales for regeneration can be quite long but we're finding in the sea that you can get a big difference I think a little bit quicker so our seagrass meadows we think five to ten years we can see some really big improvements.
Even in a year, we've seen a doubling in our, in our biodiversity, in our, in our restored seagrass compared to the mud. Um, and the same with, same with the oysters. We're seeing sort of 40 to 50% increase in biodiversity where we've got oysters and yeah, these are tiny little areas at the moment, but uh, but the benefits happen very quickly in the sea 'cause it's an interconnected habitat.
So.
Kathi: Yeah.
Philip: It's properly exciting.
Kathi: And it's almost like running a little experiment in one small area, and then being able to think about, okay, how do you then scale that and make it.
Philip: So that's exactly what, where Seawilding are at the moment. So, we all want to go landscape scale, but at the moment, We can't put our finger on the right methodology for doing that because some, because we'll have these questions in our mind.
Well, is it better to put an oyster down at 10 grams or 20 grams or 30 grams? Is it better to plant seagrass by using rhizome transplanting, which is the roots, or is it better to do seeds and baggers? We just don't know the answers to that yet. So at the moment we're conducting huge experiments, um, which is also restoring habitat at the same time, but we're just trying to monitor which is the most successful of that habitat restoration. And then we can push the button and go, right, now we can go for some really big funds to make this happen on a landscape scale.
Kathi: Incredible. And so do you want to walk me in basic, uh, simple to understand ways through the process of restoring a seagrass meadow? What's required and what steps do you have to take for that?
Philip: So, the start off point is surveying. So you, you, you survey an area to see if you've got any existing seagrass and to see if the seabed is suitable for seagrass restoration. That's your first two steps.Then you're going to get permission from NatureScot because you might be interacting with an existing seagrass bed which is protected, and you've got to come up with a fairly robust plan on how you're going to do that restoration.
Then it gets interesting. What is the best way of doing that restoration? We don't actually know yet, but we're trialling various methods. One method is to go out at exactly this time of year, and we're sort of mid August now, and collect seed from this plant before it's fallen off the plant. So you've got to get that timing pretty good.
You then put those seeds into a tank, allow them to fall from the plant that you've harvested in the tank, and then you sweep them seeds up. You store them seeds till it's time to plant them, which we think is probably either October or the spring. We're not sure, we're experimenting with both. And then you either plant the seed directly into the seabed, or you put it in little bags that protects the seed from predation or from being washed away, and then put the bags on the seabed and they rot away, allowing the germinating plant to come through.
Um, or, so that's using seed. The other way of doing it is going into the seagrass. You can do this at any time of year. You can harvest individual plants under license from NatureScot, and then you plant those individual plants out on the sediment, uh, and with the hope that what happens is the rhizomes have survived that process.
They then... Because they kind of have been slightly stressed by it, they think, God, I need to grow now. This is, this is bad news. We need to grow. So it sort of sets off a super growth pattern that allows the rhizomes to interconnect and put shoots up in the gaps. So you then get an infill in the meadow and you get hopefully a proper seagrass meadow resulting from the individual plants that you put out.
Kathi: So when you're in a seagrass meadow, does that mean... That one plant actually has multiple shoots, or is it individual plants that you're seeing?
Philip: So, um, it can vary. Sometimes you've got one shoot, one rhizome, one root system that can have 10 or 15 plants coming off it. Sometimes you've got one plant and one root.
It can really vary. But what you get when you put your hand into a seagrass meadow and you're trying to dig out a root is this massive interconnected root system. It's so wonderful. And then you start thinking, hold on a minute. What's one of the biggest problems we have with, uh, the ocean, the sort of coastal communities around here, and a lot of it, not so much here, but certainly down south, is coastal erosion.
So if you put this huge network of roots into this very fine sediment, it locks it all into place, so it's going to be a massive boon for coastal erosion. So we think it's another huge advantage of restoring seagrass.
Kathi: That's so interesting, that's the second time now that I thought about an episode earlier in the season that is about bogs.
Philip: Oh right, yeah, yeah.
Kathi: Peat doing similar things in terms of locking carbon away into the soil or into the ground. And now also seagrass, um, being one of the measures against coastal erosion in the same way that, that, peat and that is, is, is a, as a measure against soil washing away. So it's, that's really fascinating.
Philip: Yeah, no, it's really interesting. And also it helps mitigate against storm surges because the root network is really strong. The plants take energy out of the waves, which means you're not blasted with the same energy in a wave that you would be otherwise. So, benefit after benefit, hopefully.
Kathi: Um, can you tell me a bit or describe some of the challenges that you face in your work? And that could be practical challenges in the water or maybe more, um, challenges in, in the face of other people being part of that conversation and, and how decisions are being made.
Philip: Yeah, it's a good, it's a really good question. The challenges sort of vary on a daily basis almost, but the main challenges we face, I think, from a practical point of view is, like we were discussing before, is figuring out the best way of doing stuff and having to work at seagrass time or oyster time.
If we trial a seagrass thing, we have to wait 18 months to see if it works. It's just what we have to do. So, and then if we trial something one year and it's super hot, and we trial something the next year and it's super cold, then that skewers our learnings quite heavily. Um, so we're, we're trying to create that fine balance of doing and learning at the same time.
Because we can't wait till the science is perfect, um, but we need to rely on the science to make sure we get the best methodology, so we have to both do and learn, and that's the approach we're taking, but, but, the, the main challenge is that, like I said, that time scale that you have to work at. In terms of external influences, um, I think still, it's changing now, but I think at a regulatory level, The concept of rewilding and rebuilding habitats rather than conserving habitats still hasn't fully sunk in to the point of where they're like, yeah, I get this, let's do this.
We still have to play the convincing game on oyster restoration rather than just conserving a wee pocket of oysters there. And we still have to play a little bit of a game on the, well, we've got seagrass, why do we need to put any more in? Well, yeah, because there's not very much. And we think we need to help it.
Um, that is changing. And within a lot of the kind of regulatory organisations, um, there's some really good people doing good work, uh, who are super supportive of what we do particularly. Um, but, but that has been a little bit of a challenge in the past. And then, going forward, at the moment, most of our work doesn't come in conflict with any commercial interest going on in the loch.
However, at some point in the future that may happen. So we're going to have to maybe persuade, or... Or come up with compromises with people who have commercial interests to try and change either what we do or what they do, so we can both flourish in the loch. How that happens, we won't know yet, but that will happen at some point.
Kathi: The future will tell, I guess. Um, how do you... Sorry, I'm gonna do that again.
You already mentioned, you know, that there's a few different local groups and obviously Seawilding has grown out of another local group as well. How do you engage with different organisations and groups, community led or otherwise? Uh, in the local area and, um, I'm thinking for example, the, the Friends of the Sound of Jura,
Philip: Yeah.
Kathi: Or the Argyll Hope Spot, who are two organisations I personally have made experiences with. So how does that kind of network function?
Philip: So, so the, so the Argyll Hope Spot's interesting because that's the kind of label that we all live under. So we are, we are Argyll Hope Spot, Friends of the Sound of Jura are Argyll Hope Spot. It, it governs our whole area and it's a label we all fully believe in and get behind because... We're living in an environment that isn't good as it could be, but it has hope that it could be a lot better. So that's kind of the basis of the Hope Spot. So in terms of communicating with other organizations like ourselves, then the, uh, The easiest way to do it is through this wonderful thing that's been set up, that help us set up actually, which is the Coastal Community Network and they are run to support and connect individual community groups around the country so we have a bigger voice and we have Uh, shared learnings.
We have, um, you know, all the way down to practical phone calls where you can phone somebody from a different group and go, Well, you've done seagrass. How did you do that? Or, um, how do you set up a website? Where did you get that information? Or we've got a fish farm application. How do we, how do we, um, get through that and, and find out if it's a good or bad one or whatever?
So the Coastal Community Network, the CCN, has been vital for that.
Kathi: Mm. And beyond kind of the local area or beyond the maybe the grassroots level as well, how do you engage with, say, local councils or businesses with commercial interests? Um, or even, you know, government bodies, uh, I'm thinking of NatureScot and things like that - how does that function?
Philip: So being part of CCN allows us access to these government bodies. So that's, that's our route into that. We're also part of the Scottish Rewarding Alliance. Um, so that's another way into lobbying politicians. We've also developed some personal relationships with particularly the green MSPs like Ariane Burgess who are super excited by what's happening here and want to help us and support us as best they can, which is very lovely.
In terms of the commercial conversations, one of the routes we're going down at the moment as a community So this is not Seawilding, but this is more a CROMACH thing, is to, um, try and create a demonstration and research marine protected area in Loch Craignish. And that gives us a mechanism because we have to engage all the stakeholders, all the commercial interests in the loch, to get that through.
Um, and we have to go to them and say, this is our plan to improve the health of the loch, are you on board? Um, and if they say yes, then we have to come up with some projects that we can work on together that will hopefully improve the health of the loch. So that's, that's probably the main mechanism for the local commercial and business interests that we're using to kind of build those relationships to try and improve the loch. A a, a very quick example is working with the Ardfern Yacht Center to help communicate where the seagrass beds are to, um, yacht, yacht, yacht people sailing in their yachts, so they don't anchoring the sea grass.
Kathi: Mm-hmm.
Philip: So it's a very simple example of working with the, a local business.
Kathi: That's brilliant. And I, I like how you explain or, or describe, you know, on the one hand, it is about local community getting involved and not just having these decisions made top down. But on the other hand, you kind of still have to play by the rules, um, and play the game a little bit and then use the mechanisms that exist to your benefit and in new and different ways. And yeah, that's that's really inspiring. Um, can you talk a bit more about the networking aspect that you do with other community groups or other charities as well, and maybe some of the training you deliver or, um, yeah.
Philip: So, one of the ways we'd like to see Seawilding expand as a, as a, um, either as a, as a charity, but, but mainly to see our, what the work we're doing, see oysters, seagrass, habitat restoration, expanding, is to motivate, to train, to help other communities to do this themselves.
And as part of that, we run training weekends, um, every year, inviting other communities here so they can learn firsthand how we're doing what we're doing, the mistakes we've made, uh, the successes we've had, and then hopefully they can build similar projects in their own communities. Um, CCN are very good at facilitating a lot of this as well.
So they do monthly calls and restoration that we can all attend and share best practice again, share mistakes. They run a big event every two years where we all go to, called Gartmore. Um, that allows us to network there to, to have presentations, either give presentations or receive presentations about particular successes or failures or whatever.
So there is- that networking is, is working very, very well. The main problem we have as a, as a community force is capacity. So, um, the mistake we've probably made a little bit at the beginning is believing that the community can just do this voluntarily. You can't. The community can do it, and communities all around Scotland can do it, but they have to be supported with providing jobs to do that.
Um, otherwise... You get burned out very, very quickly. And we found that with Seawilding. You know, I'm about the most passionate person in the world about rewilding. And I was holding down a job, got a family of three kids, trying to volunteer for Seawilding. It, it was, it got to the point where it wasn't fun.
And I still kept doing it because it's important, but you need to get paid people in these roles that allow them to really drive this stuff forward.
Kathi: Absolutely. And I think that's the same in so many different sectors as well. And, you know, I've personally gone through that process myself of constantly having the conversation about, Oh, but you're passionate about this. Don't you enjoy doing it? But like you say, at some point, it just gets too much in order to give it your all. You need to be able to fully focus on that and still be able not to worry about your livelihood.
Philip: Definitely. And it's okay to enjoy something you get paid for. I think we've got this weird attitude in Britain where we need to work really hard and be really miserable working. It's like, well, surely if you're lucky enough, and I understand my privilege. I have huge privilege. Um, but. If you're lucky enough to have a job that's fun, that's a good thing.
Kathi: Exactly.
Philip: It's not a bad thing.
Kathi: Yeah. And then being able to harness your passion and your expertise and your, you know, innovation as well into something that will change the world is amazing. And being paid for it.
Philip: Yeah, we're very lucky.
Kathi: How fantastic.
Philip: Very lucky. I have to say, we are very lucky.
Kathi: Um, There are obviously a lot of restoration projects, not just seagrass, but including seagrass as well in other places in Scotland, and it seems like they're all kind of doing it slightly in different ways.
There's some that are led by national agencies, some like yourselves, led by grassroots community groups. Can you maybe comment on the advantages and disadvantages of your process or your, your approach and where you think you might be able to learn something from how it's done elsewhere.
Philip: Yeah, so, I think the, the, the advantages of, of being this kind of community startup, if you like, is that, for instance, very, it can be a very simple thing. If I want to go down... Down to the water there, and I have to walk through that field. I know I speak to Sandy Ritchie. That's who owns that field. Like, I don't have to ask anybody.
I don't have to get their permission. I can just give them a call or Whatsapp them and go, can I go down your field and, um, put a, you know, a wee cage out of oysters and do a trial there. And they'll be like, yeah, no worries. Um, Whereas if you're an agency coming in, you have to get permission, you have to figure out who owns that field, you have to ask around and they'll be like, Oh, who are you coming in and doing this?
You haven't built up that relationship with everybody in the community that - you haven't built up that trust. Um, so that's a huge advantage. And then, you know, we've got a really huge mixed skillset. We're not employed to do a certain thing. We've come to this because we want to make something happen. So if we're, um, if we're having to fix up the boat shed, we don't have to get a builder in and we've got the skills within the team to do that.
Our marine scientist happens to be a tree surgeon, so he can top some of the trees, you know. So, you know West Coast community You tend to find multi skilled people and which means you can just get stuff done quicker. Then we don't have a massive decision tree to go up and down. So if we want to change a poster, I do a lot of the communication stuff and, and the website stuff and I'll just check with one person.
Do you think this is alright? Yeah, it's alright. Job done.
Um, whereas if we're a part of a big organisation, then if I want to change the website, I have to go to the web designer that's been employed by the big organisation, and then I have to check with the manager of both the web design and of my manager, and then I have to get permission from all of those to change a couple of words.
So that's like two weeks work to do something I can maybe do in five minutes. (Kathi: Yeah.) So we're really efficient, um, with money. And we're really quick to do stuff.
The disadvantage, I would say, of our approach is that we have to create all our own resources. So that obviously takes a bit of time. Uh, and getting access to big funds to really push this forward.
You need a track record to do that. You're not gonna be given multi-million pound projects. If you're just a wee start up with a few shnees in Ardfern that are looking to get a project up and running, chucked a few oysters in and thought, Whoa, what's this? So we've had to build up that kind of trust and track record with the wider funding community, which we're starting to do now. But if you're WWF, let's say, you have that track record, you know, you're a trusted, uh, funded organization. So if you're saying, well, give us a million pounds and we'll deliver this project, they'll probably go, well, you've done it before. Yeah, let's, let's see you do it.
So, you know, there are advantages and disadvantages.
Kathi: Absolutely. There's a question kind of in the back of my head that I would love to ask. And I'm hoping. Well, it actually matches up with another question I also want to ask. Yeah, yeah, thank you. That was shit anyways. Wait for that to leave.
What even is that? It's like a little quad bike or something. It goes straight up the hill. Or a lawnmower.
Um, there's a question on the back of my mind, and I kind of have two ways of asking you. One is, is there anything... And if yes, and I hope your answer is yes, what gives you hope?
Philip: Uh, yes, actually, lots gives me hope. So bigger picture stuff, we have this climate crisis, and we have this biodiversity crisis.
Uh, and on one hand you could think, oh no, you know, we're maybe looking at human extinction if we don't sort this out. But the other hand is if we do sort this out, what is it going to look like? It's going to look incredible. We're going to have very low cost energy. We're going to have beautiful air quality. We're going to have abundant wildlife. We're going to have farming systems that work with nature for people and for wildlife. This is a utopian vision, and it's not like we could have it. We have to have it to survive. And actually... For some reason that gives me huge amounts of hope because we're either not going to succeed and go extinct or we're going to succeed and have this incredible world that we're going to have forged for our generation possibly, definitely for the future generations. So in terms of are we going to be a good ancestor for them?
Then we have to be and if we achieve that then we'll be a brilliant ancestor for future generations. So it's gonna be super exciting. So bigger picture stuff that gives me real hope.
On the local level, I've got real hope too, because we did a survey recently, and it turned out the vast majority of the local population care about their loch, and wanted to see it better, wanted to see it healthier, and that's enabled us to go down this D and R MPA that we were talking about earlier, the [demonstration and] research marine protected area.
So that's, that's a game changer. People didn't have that care - years ago. You know, they're either too hard at work just surviving, or it just wasn't in their sphere of knowledge or thinking or whatever it was. A nd then you go and swim in seagrass and you're like, imagine there being more of this stuff. It's so awesome. And then you watch those oysters clean that tank out and you're like -
the sea could be like this, you know what I mean? So, if we can achieve even half of what we need to, the world's going to be a very wonderful place. So, yeah, definitely full of hope.
Kathi: That's amazing, and you've almost answered my second way of asking this question, and that would be if you could paint me a picture of what the world would look like, the way you envision it, um, being able to do all these things, and I think that was, that was pretty much what you did there, so.
Philip: So I'll give you a wee, another wee analogy you might find quite useful. There's a, there's a... Uh, we're doing these interviews with people about what the loch used to be like. And the amount of life in here is just, used to be phenomenal. And there's a wildlife boat trip that would go out of Craobh Haven, which is just over the other side of the peninsula.
And he would go out of here, and he had to go at five knots, because there were so many seabirds around his boat, he would have killed them if he didn't go that slowly. Just hundreds, thousands, as far as the eye could see. They don't exist now, they've gone. There's no food for them. Um. So yeah, what does it look like in the future?
Well, I go out on my boat, I can't go five knots because I'm going to crush these millions of seabirds. And then, there's pods of dolphins, there's huge populations of orcas, there's great whales back on our shoreline, and there's flapper skate the size of three meter wingspans flying around the loch.
That's what the future looks like.
Kathi: Amazing. So how can people get involved?
Philip: Good question. We have various volunteer days throughout the year which are all on our website, so you can sign up to any of that. For people that live locally, we have Other things that are a bit more tide dependent or a bit more, um, need a bit more training.
So like Monitoring our oysters you can get involved with that. You can always give us all your hard earned cash. That's always good. So you can do a bit of that. And actually just you know a lot of what's nice about what we do and what's really important is that if the message is shared. A) it gives us validation which helps us fundraise from big funders, like government funding, um, but also it just gets that message out there that the sea is an incredible place and we need to really love it.
It needs our love. It really needs it now. So , if that's all you can do is just look at what we do and share it and, and, and come and learn a little bit about it and, and talk to your friends about, about the pressures and the, and the wonderfulness of it and, and what needs to change in it, then that's a good thing to do.
Kathi: Brilliant. We'll put all the links in the show notes to the website, where to donate, where to find out about upcoming events and social media as well. Um, I do encourage people to follow because, yeah, like I said, the visual images and videos you share with Seawilding, it's, yeah, it makes it really approachable and, and relatable, even though I live quite a good distance from the sea, so it's quite nice to see that as a reminder and, and be immersed in it that way. Is there anything else you would like to give listeners on the way, whether it is about the future, or Seawilding, the work you do, or anything else?
Philip: Um, I think it's, yeah, I think it's just to hold on to that hope. Somebody today actually mentioned to me that the best reason for hope is it gives us the drive to take action.
And we need to take action, but if we do take action, it's going to be really good. So, let's just... Yeah, use that.
Kathi: Brilliant. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Philip: No problem, thank you.
Kathi: Amazing.
___________________________________________________________________
In just two days I learnt so much about rewilding out seas. Why it’s important, how it might be done, and why it is crucial that local communities are at the forefront of this movement.
We will be sharing lots of resources to learn more about seagrass in the show notes of this episode. First and foremost, you’ll find the links to connect with Seawilding, how to join them as a volunteer and other ways to support their work.
You’ll also find links to other community-led initiatives on the coast of Argyll, a few articles and videos you might find interesting, and other podcast episodes about seagrass.
One of them is the latest episode on my own podcast Wild for Scotland. It’s called ‘A Long Time Coming’ and takes you on an immersive journey on Loch Craignish. I’m taking you out on the paddleboard to learn about native oysters, we’ll hear more from Philip about the creatures that live in the seagrass, and we’ll go snorkelling to encounter some of them. You can find Wild for Scotland wherever you listen to this podcast right now.
Seagrass meadows are not just something pretty to look at if you’re fortunate enough to snorkel or paddle past one. They can do so much for our climate resilience and can help us take hopeful, solutions-led approaches to dealing with the biodiversity crisis and coastal erosion. In times where it is easy to feel disconnected from the people and powers that seem to be setting the agenda at the top, projects like Seawilding bring the conversation back to the ground level, and invite us to participate.
And I hope that listening to this episode has inspired you to do just that.
Monday Oct 30, 2023
Monday Oct 30, 2023
One of our Story Weavers, Lesley Anne Rose, interviews community artist, Andrew Crummy. Andrew is one of the team of behind the vision for the The 360 Center, an inspiring community led project to transform the site of the former Cockenzie Power Station in East Lothian.
Credits:
Interview and recording: Lesley Anne Rose
Edit: Kaska Hempel
Resources:
SCCAN Member of the Month blog about 360 Centre: https://sccan.scot/blog/member-of-the-month-the-360-centre/
The 360 Centre http://www.the360centre.com/
The Great Tapestry of Scotland https://www.greattapestryofscotland.com/
Andrew Crummy https://www.andrewcrummy.com/
John Muir Way https://johnmuirway.org/
Siccar Point https://www.geowalks.co.uk/siccar-point/
Sustaining Dunbar https://sustainingdunbar.org/
Sustaining Musselburgh https://www.facebook.com/sustainingmusselburgh/
Monday Oct 16, 2023
Monday Oct 16, 2023
This is a cross over episode from the Disrupting the Doughnut of Doom podcast by our friends at EMEN (Ethnic Minority Environmental Network). Podcast host, Andrew Williams, interviews Thalia Groucott from Glasgow Food Policy Partnership. They discuss how what we eat, and how we grow it, affects the climate, the countryside and the communities we live in.
Resources
Listening matters – a collection of climate-engaged podcasts from Scotland: https://sccan.scot/blog/on-the-way-to-1000-better-stories-ten-scottish-climate-podcasts/
Disrupting the Doughnut of Doom podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0jXi3tU4hVmSjehCGA72oj?si=ad08bff3b31446b3
The Good Food for Glasgow podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/49vlwtpxg2e0xZtXguoUpn
Inclusion, Race, The Climate and Food episode of Good Food for Glasgow podcast featuring Andrew from EMEN: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3f8cGVcFO4lIhEimKqt46M?si=47ba961a553e42ac
Ethnic Minority Environmental Network: http://theemennetwork.com
Glasgow Food Policy Partnership: https://glasgowfood.net/
Monday Oct 02, 2023
Monday Oct 02, 2023
What is deliberative democracy, and can it help your community involve more people in creating a better future for all? SCCAN Story Weaver, Kaska Hempel, explores the idea in this story from the People’s Assembly in Torry, as the community stand up against becoming a sacrificial zone yet again.
The Assembly took place at St Fittick’s Park over the weekend of 28 and 29 of May this year, and it was facilitated by Open Source. It was a part of the multi-partner Just Transition Communities pilot project, coordinated by North-East Climate Action Network (NESCAN) Hub and funded by the Scottish Government from their Just Transition Fund.
Interviews, recording and edits: Kaska Hempel
With special thanks to NESCAN for the use of recording of Alison Stewart’s speech, from the North East Communities Just Transition project partner Knowledge Exchange event 31 May, 2023.
Resources:
NESCAN https://www.nescan.org/
Grassroots to Global/Open Source https://www.grassroots2global.org/open-source
Assembly Catalyst training with Open Source in Aberdeen, apply by 4th of October https://www.grassroots2global.org/training
Declaration of Torry People’s Assembly May 2023 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LVnCe8YBD4PV1uThl411Ahzfbu1gejtA0LHoro-9eBg/edit
Scottish Government’s Just Transition Fund https://www.gov.scot/publications/just-transition-fund/pages/overview/
Lesley Riddoch’s column on Torry People’s Assembly in The National, May 2023 https://www.thenational.scot/politics/23514047.torry-one-deprived-areas-lose-park-just-transition/
XR Scotland statement on reasons for leaving Scottish Climate Assembly Stewarding Group in 2020 https://xrscotland.org/2020/11/xr-scotland-can-no-longer-endorse-scotlands-climate-citizens-assembly/
First Torry People’s Assembly 2021 report by Scott Herrett and Susan Smith https://www.grassroots2global.org/thinkinghome/torry-assembly
People’s Torry Assembly Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/PeoplesAssemblyTorry
People’s Torry Assembly Twitter https://twitter.com/Torry_PA
Grampian Community Law Centre, Robert Gordon University https://www.rgu.ac.uk/news/news-2022/5411-grampian-community-law-centre-prepares-for-torry-launch-in-scotland-first
A mini-doco by ReelNews "They're killing our kids!" Save St Fitticks Park, including Climate Camp visit to St Fittick’s https://youtu.be/jtvfbc-2GT8,
Friends of St Fittick’s Park https://saintfittickstorry.com/
Greyhope Bay Café in a doco by Sara Stroud https://vimeo.com/639311933
Transcript
[00:00:00] Kaska Hempel: Hello. You look interesting.
Why don't you tell me what you're doing here?
[00:00:09] Speaker 1: What we're doing here, right at this moment in time, is directing people to where the actual assembly really is. But, on the greater scheme of things, I think there's...
[00:00:20] Kaska Hempel: Oh, there's a sign!
[00:00:21] Speaker 1: I think the... how can Torry reclaim the power to make this a healthy community to live and grow up in? That's the main thing that it's all about.
[00:00:31] Liam: Yeah, I'm Liam. I'm just a volunteer for the weekend. So I've not been involved in any organisation. I was like, it's good to help out, but yeah, learning a lot and it's a great community event to meet people that are quite active in activism circles around Aberdeen.
It's a little melting pot. I'm from just south of Aberdeen and I live in the north. I got involved with Friends Of St Fittick's Park, who are one of the main activist groups organising the event today. The green space we're in, St Fittick's. It is earmarked for demolition company called Energy Transition Zone.
My degree was in Conservation Biology, so I'm really interested in the biodiversity here. It's won awards. There was £300, 000 of spending from the council to enhance biodiversity at this site. It's done incredible. Yeah. It's not a very clear cut issue. It involves a lot of discussion around the power that oil and gas has in Aberdeen, who the council is serving.
There's vast amounts of money changing hands. Yeah. It's got a lot of interesting climate and community justice aspects where you go, who is this for? who's it going to benefit? who's suffering?
[00:01:56] Alastair: Sup, my name's Alastair. Well, you can have a badge with it.
[00:02:01] Kaska Hempel: Yeah, unfortunately we can't see it.
[00:02:03] Alastair: Yeah, so I'm just helping out too. I've come up to Aberdeen for a couple of days to do whatever. Put tables up, or move chairs around, or anything like that, just to help the People's Assembly to run as smoothly as possible. It's also, you know, to try and help with... Yeah, if we live in a democracy, then we ought to be able to ensure that what goes on is actually for the best for all people, not for a small minority who are going to make a lot of money.
And, you know, got to exploit the poorest even more, if I've understood correctly. That's what I think is happening. Yeah, if you... basically, if you go over there, it's by the old folks home, by the Balnagask.
[00:02:50] Kaska Hempel: Hello, it's Kaska, one of your Story Weavers. That was me making my way to the day one of Torry People's Assembly at St Fittick's Park in Aberdeen on Saturday 27th of May, earlier this year. We'll hear more from the gathering later, but first let me ask you... do you know what People's Assembly is? Or deliberative democracy?
Well, before I embarked on this journey, I was not quite sure myself. So let me share with you what I've learned as I've dipped my toe into the Nescan's Just Transition Communities project. The project that was conceived last November and with support from the Scottish Government's Just Transition Fund, Nescan, or North East Scotland Climate Action Network, along with several partners, embarked on a pilot year.
Here is Alison Stewart, Nescan's Hub Manager. Explaining the transformative thinking behind it at the Knowledge Exchange Get Together for the Project Partners in June this year.
[00:03:55] Alison Stewart: When we talk about getting to net zero, there is a tendency to limit ourselves and our imaginations. We need to think bigger, we need to think holistically, we need to think collaboratively and inclusively, and we need to think of systems change.
When we discuss what a just transition means, the main barriers to change, to transition, It's that our current decision making processes are flawed. They allow for vested interests to dominate the conversation and create an elite few who determine the process and the pathways to net zero and the changes that we have to make.
The people are not generally represented in this, but if we want a just transition, all sectors of our society, workers and communities need to be involved on an equal basis in our decision making processes. We have an opportunity, while getting to net zero, to create the society that we want. A fair, just, equal, biodiverse, healthy and thriving one.
And we need to seize this opportunity with both hands.
So Nescan Hub is playing our part to ultimately create, over a few years, a toolkit for communities and decision makers. So by the end of this process, we really hope that communities can run these processes themselves. The ideas, plans, and outcomes can then be fed into wider and bigger decision making processes.
[00:05:19] Kaska Hempel: While we wait for the recordings from this gathering to be published by Nescan on their website, along with their reflections on the pilot, let's immerse ourselves in the Assembly process itself. In this episode, I take you along for a visit with People's Assembly in Torry, which was facilitated by Open Source.
Before I headed out to experience the Assembly itself, I spoke to Eva, one of the people who helped facilitate the Assembly with the community. I wanted to get to grips with the concepts and the process in theory. To start, I asked her to introduce herself and share her own journey into this work.
[00:05:59] Eva Schonveld: I'm Eva Schonveld. I live in Portobello in Edinburgh, and I work for an organisation called Heart Politics. Particularly on facilitation of deliberative democratic processes through a group called Open Source. It's been quite a long journey. There are a few key moments. The ecologist did a supplement on climate change, probably at the end of the 90s, that hit me like a ton of bricks.
And I really wanted to do something about it and wasn't sure what. And then I read another article, probably four or five years later, in Permaculture News. That Rob Hopkins had written about the work that he did at Kinsale and suddenly I kind of thought oh, this is great, It's so positive and you know, we can work and make our communities better places as well as doing something about climate change. So I managed to shift my work to be working mostly in that for quite a few years and then burnt out and came back slowly into climate action in different ways, but particularly with Extinction Rebellion, which is where, you know, I first came across this idea that we could use democracy really differently.
I think I'd already started thinking about politics and about how toxic the political system that we have is now and how it doesn't do anybody any good, including the people who are in it. And, you know, we get very bad decisions out of it. And I'm really interested in the kind of emotional and cultural underpinnings of that.
And I think that came together with the Assembly work that the Extinction Rebellion really highlighted. And our group was forming, and via Extinction Rebellion we had two representatives on the stewarding group of the Scottish Climate Assembly that the Scottish Government put together and, you know, had quite a lot of input into that, I think making it quite a lot better than it would have been.
But eventually our two representatives decided to leave because they felt that basically the people who were going to be Assembly members weren't going to be allowed to deliberate properly. The thing was increasingly being skewed towards existing government policy. Which is kind of understandable, but not very democratic.
And so we have set out to explore how Assemblies might be part of a different way of doing democracy. And that's what I'm working on at the moment.
[00:08:38] Kaska Hempel: That's really interesting. I'm already sort of spotting a bit of jargon that I think it will be quite useful to explain to people. So, if you could explain what deliberative democracy means?
[00:08:50] Eva Schonveld: Yeah, it is one of those kind of catch all phrases that sort of means, you know, if you deliberate, you mean you think really deeply and carefully, and I think there is something about slowing down and moving away from the kind of party political Punch and Judy kind of politics, you know, it's the top layer of what we see in government because it's not the only thing that happens in government to something, you know, and here's where it gets a bit vague.
For me, it means much more inclusive, and it means being open to a much wider range of how people understand things and process ideas. So, you know, a lot of what happens in mainstream politics is very verbal, is very written, but that's not necessarily the best way for us to process information, or certainly not all of us.
So for me, deliberative democracy then broadens out into a... really interesting, rich exploration of how can we be really inclusive in the decisions that we make? How can we make sure that we set them up so that people don't get reactive, but actually are listening to one another and to the information they're hearing, and have time and space to really think about and come to shared understandings of what's really going on, and then move towards kind of good better decisions.
So yes, it's a bit of a catch all phrase.
[00:10:15] Kaska Hempel: So you already mentioned the Citizens Assembly on Climate that Scottish Government put together a few years back, a couple of years back now. Can you explain what that involves and how is it different to People's Assemblies or more grassroots driven Assemblies work that you've been involved in?
[00:10:34] Eva Schonveld: Yeah, so Citizens Assemblies are one of the more popular forms of alternatives to mainstream democracy. And they're one of the most sort of clearly... delineated. So with a Citizens Assembly, people turn up because they've been, well, A, invited, and then B, they've been sortitioned. So the sortition process, I don't exactly know how it happens, but the intention is to try to get a representative sample of the population of whoever's being consulted here.
So you'll select for different demographics, for age and education and race and gender. And you'll try and say, ok, so we have got, I don't know, 56 percent of women in Scotland, so we'll want to make sure that 56 out of 100 people in this Citizens Assembly end up being women. So we're trying to sort of build a mini picture of all of us within the group who become members of the Assembly.
And no one else joins. It's a closed group that normally lasts over several weeks. It's normally around a hundred people. And there's a kind of phasing of it where there's input from across a spectrum, which is also really important. So you'll have an input of people with different views, but who have some kind of expertise, some reason to be the people who you'd go and ask about this particular subject that we're looking at.
So that people can compare. And the idea is that, you know, people are presented with these different ideas, and then they deliberate. They talk in small groups and talk in big groups and have different, you know, there's different methods of helping people work through the material that they've got to come to some kind of shared opinion.
And obviously it's rarely 100%, but it can often be quite high. Just because this process of filtering and boiling down and taking time and throwing ideas around together tends to move people towards more common ground, tends to move away from the polarisation that we're used to in politics at the moment.
[00:12:47] Kaska Hempel: So that's the Citizens Assembly and that's usually put on by the government and feeds into government policy in some way.
[00:12:55] Eva Schonveld: That is partly because they're quite expensive to put on, just the sortition process itself can be pretty expensive. So, and it has tended to be governments who've done that or local authorities.
We're very interested in the idea of Citizen led Citizens Assemblies because we felt that the government was not able to put its own agenda to one side when it hosted a Citizens Assembly. And then People's Assemblies are, again, a kind of catch all phrase for like a big meeting. For us to try to bring that together into something that feels like it's a contribution towards something that's really democratic.
The outreach phase is as important as the actual Assembly itself. Letting people know that it's happening. Giving people an opportunity to feed in, to have views on what it is that we should be focusing on. And trying to make the process itself as accessible as we can. It's all part of trying to make this feel like it's legitimate.
And in some ways it can't be. Because there'll always be people who get left out. And so what we see with People's Assemblies is that they're particularly good at generating policy ideas. There may be places where people want to take decisions, and you wouldn't say, well, you know, you guys can't decide to start a community garden even though you found a bunch of other people who really want to do it at the People's Assembly.
Of course, decisions may be made there, and may lead to action in communities. But, in the bigger picture, It may be that, you know, communities can come up with ideas for how their local economies could be transformed. Or what changes of National Policy would be needed in order to make community life be more meaningful and fulfilling, and be less damaging to the environment.
So that's how we're seeing those. So People's Assemblies really good at generating ideas, and if you connect them up across different communities, then become quite a powerful voice which is part of our kind of theory of change. And then you could have potentially Citizen led Citizens Assemblies to make decisions around the kind of policies that have been generated by local People's Assemblies.
So within our movement, we're relatively well practiced in these kind of processes of helping people to think creatively, to listen to one another, to make decisions that lead on to action. But in terms of interacting with democratic systems as they stand, we're... right at the beginning of that. And I think the work that we're doing in Torry is, it's our first step into seeing how this community could get more of a voice that feels like it genuinely comes from an informed position of what people in this community
feel about particular issues and that could potentially lead to change. Torry is just south of the river in Aberdeen and is a community that has been in the news quite a lot recently and it's quite an extraordinary place to go to because it does feel like it has ended up at the sharp end of some very bad decisions over the last 30, 40 years.
[00:16:21] Lynne Restrup: I bought my own two comfy chairs. They're much comfier.
[00:16:26] Kaska Hempel: Oh, yes.
Lynn, who I found at the welcome desk once I got to the Assembly site, filled me in on what it's been like to live in a place treated like a sacrificial zone for decades. Wind was picking up at this point, so there's some noise from the tent flapping around in the background.
[00:16:48] Lynne Restrup: I'm Lynne Restrup. I'm a long time Torry resident.
I've lived in Torry for nearly 50 years. I live in Balnagask Road and my extended family lives in Torry. My mum lives in Torry. My sister lives in Torry. My oldest son still lives in Torry. And I really love the community, but I've seen a huge change in it in the last 50 years. It used to be...
It always had its problems but it's kind of seems to have lost its heart a bit. I think people have got a bit demoralized with having all the good things in Torry taken away from us and having all the rubbish things sort of put in our community, things that other communities really wouldn't want to have.
And It's after a period of time, I think people just get a bit demoralized about the fights. So some of the things that historically have happened in Torry, like we've lost access to the sea on one side of us. Back when they demolished old Torry, the tanks were built for the oil and gas companies down there.
This was a huge part of Torry heritage from being an old fishing village, so we lost that connection with the sea then. In more recent times, we've lost one Primary School, our only Secondary School, we've lost our outdoor Sports Centre, we've lost our indoor Sports Centre.
We used to have more Medical Practices in Torry.
We've lost a lot of our retail in Torry. We've lost a lot of our community in Torry because people have moved out of Torry due to a lot of the changes that have been happening. We had a huge thriving Polish population for a while, but due to Brexit and Covid, a lot of them moved away, so we lost a lot of our new Torry folk, which was a bit of a shame.
And I think once you lose a Primary School and once you lose a Secondary School, it stops young families wanting to move into Torry. And unfortunately, since they've put some of the less desirable things in Torry, like the water treatment plant, the incinerator, and we've lost our access to the sea on the other side of Torry, which with the harbour development which nobody in Torry wanted. We all fought against that but the Harbour Board got its way. So, to lose your part of your history with the connection with the sea, to lose a Primary School and a Secondary School, have an incinerator built right beside one of our two remaining Primary Schools.
Basically, if you were in the school playground and could kick a ball hard enough, you could hit the incinerator. So, Torry's community, we're an aging population. I'm 60 now, so the fight that I'm doing is not necessarily for my benefit. It's for our younger community members. Because it's going to be a dying community, because nobody with young families is going to want to move here.
So, instead of having a thriving population of people who lived for generations in Torry, loved living in Torry, and even when they moved away had really fond memories of being in Torry, we're just going to be seen as a place that people only live in Torry if they have to. And as soon as they get the opportunity to move, that's what they're gonna do, because to be honest, if I was younger, and I'm raising my family now, I don't know if I would want to stay in Torry, and that really breaks my heart to say that.
I personally don't see how you can create anything green, truly green, by destroying the only green space that a community has. So I think the loss of St Fittick's Park is the last straw for a lot of people, and it's galvanized a lot of people. They've thought, well, we've put up with this, we've put up with that, but actually, you know...
It's not, it's not alright. We're not just going to say, okay, well, just lose our park as well, because at some point the community has to say, enough is enough. And I think that's where we are.
[00:21:10] Eva Schonveld: And one of the main things that people say when you go and ask them, shall we do an assembly in Torry? is don't bother, it won't work, and the council never listens to us.
So, that is life in Torry. And basically it's not okay. It's not okay in Torry and it's not okay anywhere else. And so our Assembly is an attempt to encourage people, encourage people who live in Torry to come together and give it another try. And it's not like we're the first thing to come along, but we hope that it may be a way to bring people together across a wide range of different interests and focuses and say, what is it that we can do together?
[00:21:55] Kaska Hempel: Let's just talk about logistics. How does one actually organise an Assembly the way that you're helping people? Is there a set format?
[00:22:07] Eva Schonveld: There's not a set format. It has to be tailor made to the particular community, but that doesn't mean that there aren't phases and areas of work that you can expect to come up.
And the first ones is outreach. I think it's almost impossible to do too much outreach. And we've come up with a completely spurious statistic which is like 90 percent of the work of an Assembly happens before the Assembly. At 10%, well, maybe 5 percent is in the Assembly and then there's a whole bunch of follow up as well which probably is another 90 percent actually.
But I think because we're talking about Assemblies, we can get caught up in thinking about, so what are we actually going to do in that meeting? And obviously that's really important. But finding out where people are in the community, finding out what's important to them, finding out what would make it possible, or even desirable for them to come along to an Assembly.
Speaking to people who are not like me, who are not, you know, who's not like oneself and finding out where they're at and taking all of that information on board to develop something which is going to be as accessible and meaningful to local people as possible is massively important.
[00:23:28] Kaska Hempel: You've been involved in organising this assembly today. Why did you get involved? What
prompted you to spend your precious time, no doubt, because it was a long, long process, wasn't it?
[00:23:46] Speaker 3: It is. I mean, I'm full time work. I have a mum, an elderly mum, who I look after. I have grandchildren as well that I look after.
So I don't have a lot of free time. You know, we've been doing this for months. Every Saturday, all day, Saturday evenings, different events, going and talking to people. It is a big commitment. But I feel it's worth it for me. Because Torry really suffers a lot from social issues.
It's a really poor economic area. It's people with ill health. People rely on food banks. People are really struggling with the cost of living right now. There's a lot of unemployment, people are balancing huge, huge pressures in their personal life and not everybody has the mental strength to actually devote time to this as well because if I was a young single mum struggling to feed my kids, put food on the table, or pay my rent.
You know, I don't know if I really would be that bothered about constantly fighting with the council, getting involved with an assembly in a way to try and bring those voices together. And I feel that I kind of have to do it for maybe people who would like to do it as well.
[00:25:03] Kaska Hempel: How did you find the whole process of going through preparation?
Do you think that in any way helped the community at all?
[00:25:12] Speaker 3: As I said, I've lived in Torry a long time, but even I wasn't aware of all the pockets of really good things that are happening in Torry. I've met some amazing people in the preparation and the running up to this. People who really are community minded, that are really looking at problems in the local area, really trying to improve things.
They're small voices working on small projects, so I would like to think that the Assembly is going to give them a platform for us to find out about more about what they're doing and for them to tap more into the community support. I love the idea of an Assembly because we all feel like what we have to say is not being listened to.
And so maybe it takes folks coming in from the outside to shine a light. And for us to feel that bit more empowered than we were before. So I would like to see this as a jumping off point.
[00:26:15] Kaska Hempel: And you're talking about people coming from the outside to facilitate it. And also to, you know, report on it. How do you feel about that?
[00:26:27] Speaker 3: To be honest, to start with, I was a bit like, hmm, is this somebody else that's coming in and trying to take power away from people in Torry and tell us what should be good for us and what we should be doing and what we shouldn't be doing? And actually it's not been like that at all. It's been the real education.
For folk from the outside to go into a community and actually ask them what they think the issues are and try and sort of say, well, you know, if you did have more help, what could we do? You know, you tell us what we could be doing to help. And actually having anybody coming into a community and offering that level of support is quite unusual, I think.
And I think that they've brought, sort of, expertise as well in terms that we didn't have before. And also just somebody really actually taking an interest in Torry and people from the outside thinking actually it's not okay what's happening, not just in Torry, but in some of our other communities that are under threat.
No, I think it's easy for the council or whatever to dismiss it as just people in Torry just complaining, but when other people are seeing that same thing happening. It almost like validates what we're feeling. We're not just making a fuss over nothing. I met a few people today and talked about some of the issues, and people are actually quite astounded about the really bad things that have happened in Torry, and about the accumulative effect of one thing after the other sort of being placed in Torry.
I think a lot of people came along thinking it was just about the loss of St Fittick's Park, but there's a whole history behind it.
[00:28:18] Kaska Hempel: So that's the work you've been helping with in Torry, is that right?
[00:28:21] Eva Schonveld: Yeah, that's a lot of what we've been doing. So we've got a comms group and a logistics group and a outreach group and we have a programme group.
So the programme is, you know, what you actually do once people, you've got people through the door, what is it we're going to do together? And it's helpful if that focuses around a question. So you use all that information, all those conversations that you've had when you've been listening to people in the community to go, okay, so what are they saying the really important issues in this community are?
And is there a way that we can focus this assembly, so we touch on most of those. I think certainly with Torry, we've tried to create quite a wide question. So our question is, how can people in Torry reclaim the power to make this a good place to grow up and live in? So the question is around reclaiming power, but it's also around health.
It's also around young people. And these were things that came out from the conversations that we had. This is kind of like, there's no point. The council never listens to us. Those are issues of power. So once you have your question, you can focus your assembly. So how are we going to help people to look at that?
How do we reclaim the power? How are we going to help people to look at what is it like to grow up healthy in Torry? What would that vision of a healthy community be? And so you may want to have an input phase. You may want to have people speaking at the beginning about maybe possibly a range of views.
It kind of depends. That's where the Citizens Assembly and the People's Assembly may be most different. You may not need a range of views. You may just want to give people different opportunities to think about different parts and in Torry we've decided to hang the whole of the outputs of the Assembly around a declaration.
The declaration has different parts to it and one of them states the situation in Torry. What has happened and where we are just now. Another part states what do we want to change and who's responsible for that because I think there's a lot, you know, something that as a transition person I'm all about what can the community do together?
And this just has not washed in Torry. I think people do things and they have done things for the community and will continue to. But they're furious with the council and there's a social contract that has been broken and people aren't just going to let that go. So it has to be dealt with. What is it the people in Torry want from the council?
On their own terms, reasonably, you know, with a timeline that has been thought through and is reasonable. So we're not saying you have to change everything tomorrow, but within this reasonable point of view, we want you to have addressed this. So that's the declaration would encompass all of those things.
And then there's another piece of work which is more kind of inward facing, which is what is the community going to do about this? So both what kind of tasks and projects might we want to happen in Torry? But also if the council don't do what we said, what's our next step? You know, are we going to move into petitions or going and standing outside the council?
Or are we going to go and put our bodies on the line and block roads? You know, these are the kinds of things that people in the community might want to think about. And these are ways of reclaiming power. And so it's important that we explore them. And not everybody in the community is going to want to do everything, and that's another, you know, that's another plus, because we can potentially imagine different people doing different things.
[00:31:56] Kaska Hempel: As you might have figured out by now, I turned up on day one of two of the Assembly, which was all about, according to the programme, looking at the issues we face in Torry and creating a declaration of what needs to change, and then celebrating.
By the time I arrived at the assembly tents, the morning session was wrapping up and people already shared thoughts on problems and on things they would like to see in Torry. Each thought carefully written down on a large paper leaf to contribute to the Torry Assembly declaration tree on display. Now, focus was shifting towards the most imminent issue, the situation with St Fittick's Park. I was just in time to catch a walking tour of the place, led by Richard Caie, a member of Friends of St Fittick's Park and the Community Council.
[00:32:50] Speaker 2: Look at these tours, and we haven't lost too many people. Okay. So is this bit staying here, or is it being developed? This bit of stage here. Yeah.
[00:33:00] Speaker 1: And is the proposal then to move the, like they're saying they're gonna move the wetland or something? Yeah, that's the wetlands. Yeah.
[00:33:08] Speaker 2: These are the wetlands.
Swamp reeds look.
[00:33:15] Kaska Hempel: Wow. Yeah.
[00:33:16] Speaker 2: Bone rockes could be in Florida. That one that was up around. Yep. Right. The East Tullos Burn starts its life up in the Tullos Estate. It's all the waste from just water waste. The infrastructure there is 50, 60 years old, so nobody really knows what goes into it. That's a typical colour.
It actually runs alongside the railway in a culvert. And this is where it certainly comes out. And between 2010 and 2014, there was a lot of discussion about this area, a lot of good consultation, and this is the end result. All the wetlands there are artificial. They're all being ploughed out by JCBs.
And there's about 200 yards of reed beds till we get up to the next bridge. And the reed beds filter everything out. And every now and again people come and remove the mud and the excess plants. It does work. If you look at the colour of the water and then our next stop up in the bridge. Compare the colour.
If you want to taste it, carry on, but I would not recommend it.
Right, hurry up at the back there, come on. Right, if you come back here in a couple of years time, unfortunately, this might be fenced off and from here all the way, that big triangle there, that's all going to be an industrial estate. The factory's going to be here, somewhere, and all those trees are going to get zapped.
So it's sort of from here to the white state, it's all going to be industrial, up to the railway. So, this is a very popular area, people come here with barbecues, we've got facilities for children there, baskets, ball, court, nets, that's all going to get zapped as well. So we'll next stop at the bridge.
Next lot of the burn goes under the bridge and we're going to have a look at the quality of the water, see if all this, all the weeds here have improved the quality of the water.
[00:35:39] Kaska Hempel: Hiya, would you mind if I ask you a couple of questions? No, okay. Are you from Torry?
[00:35:44] Annie Munro: Yes, I'm Annie Munro, 1978. I came up from Fife.
No, I like this, I'm down here a lot, with Rosie a lot. I had another dog as well. So quiet and they want to take it away. They took the bay away, they've taken dunnies away. As you could walk up and around. There's a path that comes from here, right up to dunnies.
Kaska Hempel
That's really upsetting, isn't it? Do you think this Assembly today is going to make a difference?
[00:36:15] Annie Munro: Do you know something? I hope so. Community Council, I'm on that. I've been on different ones. But it's apathy. It's because when we didn't have a Community Council when they said about the incinerator. But people go, they're going to build it anyway. And they do. So, what can you do? But I think this is a really good thing.
It's bringing different views, sort of thing. Because before you just sit there in the Community Council and you'll go,
Oh la la, the community councillors are there and you'll say to them, but...
look, see the ducks?
[00:36:53] Kaska Hempel: Oh yes, that's the best thing, it's right in the path. Beautiful, look at all the beautiful flowers in there.
[00:36:58] Annie Munro.: I know, I know, the gorse. They'll come, look. They think they're getting fed. Oh, the water looks so much cleaner here. Yeah, cleaner, doesn't it?
[00:37:08] Kaska Hempel: So you said you're feeling hopeful about this process?
[00:37:12] Annie Munro.: Well, we need to get into people's houses.
Yeah, we need to get people involved.
It's okay saying you're here, but you don't stay here. You know what I mean? We need the people that stays here.
[00:37:26] Kaska Hempel: How do you think you can do that?
[00:37:28] Annie Munro.: I don't know. I stay on the block and not one of them know anything about it and they're not interested.
[00:37:33] Kaska Hempel: Why do you think that is?
[00:37:34] Annie Munro.: Well, they don't come down here. They don't see this. A lot of folk don't even know it exists. My daughter didn't even know this existed until I brought her down.
I used to come down here most days with her.
[00:37:46] Kaska Hempel: Is it because you've got dogs? You've had dogs that this is a space you can use?
[00:37:50] Annie Munro.: There's a lot of people come down with their kids. I've seen them in here with their push chairs and everything. Yep. Summer holidays it's used a lot more than it is now. This is all going to go.
Yeah, it's frustrating, isn't it, Richard?
[00:38:04] Richard: Nobody listens. We've got all the lovely consultations.
We've had three master planning sessions. Absolutely everybody there said, no, we don't want it. But, tick in the box, they've held a consultation. I was saying in BBC Scotland a couple of days ago, if they can take this away from a community, then no green space in Scotland is safe. A lot of people live on, sort of, the other side of down nearer to the city so they don't naturally sort of walk this way And, I don't know. We can't really get a lot of engagement going. We've got a wonderful Assembly, been well publicised, but yet, we haven't got all that many people. So, I think it's a universal problem.
[00:38:50] Kaska Hempel: Oh, look at that! That's so amazing!
The flowers over there as well, willow...
[00:38:55] Richard: Marsh, what do you call it, marsh, marigold. And if we look at St Fittick's Church over there, I've got relatives buried there. So it is local to me. Do you have any idea how old it is? Oh, I think 1809 it stopped. But it goes way, way back. I'll tell you the story of St
Fitticks.
Right folks. St Fittick's, Bay St fittick's. He was an Irish French monk that washed ashore. Up to 1906, they used to have a well on the beach and in the preceding hundreds of years it was very, very popular with the locals because it was a holy well and the church clamping down on all this nonsense and there was real trouble, real antipathy towards that because this was our well and they couldn't stop the locals from
drinking the well. As you see, what I'm saying now, even though we're way up, we can't see the sea. So if you're down in the park, you can't see the sea, you're hemmed in. And then, roughly where that big lump of earth is, that's where the new factories are going to go. So that's going to be even more hemmed in.
So far as we know, they haven't done an Environmental Impact assessment, health, Quality of Life Assessment, Health Inequality Assessment. But even if all those are negative, you sort of know we're just going to be ignored. Nobody's going to stop the massive project like this just because you get a few negative reports.
And the bottom half of that community wood, which was planted in 2010, 2014,
is going to get chopped off. And that's where the new wetlands will go. They will abut directly onto the new factories. So it just doesn't make any sense at all. The good news is the rich people who are doing this don't live here, so it won't affect them at all. Oh, we need to be thankful for that . But it's been a great community fight and I think the community will just keep on fighting.
This is our land. Right, lunch onward.
[00:41:13] Kaska Hempel: So what are you guys doing?
[00:41:18] Speaker 1: We're kind of just volunteering to... I think it's general help out. Specifically, we were gonna, if there were kids that were like, 18 to 16, that weren't wanting to sit through that, we were gonna like, take them to do physical activities and stuff.
But, because there's not a huge demand for that at the moment, we're just helping out with whatever odd jobs is available. Which is? Which is soup! We're gonna refill the soup with just the red roll.
[00:41:53] Kaska Hempel: I wanted to go back to the processes of talking to each other. You mentioned emotions and difference, maybe difference of opinion. How do you tackle these? In a meeting that's obviously going to have that kind of diversity of voices and strong emotions in it. Is there techniques or approaches that you use or you recommend people use?
[00:42:16] Eva Schonveld: Well, there's a whole range of different things. And I guess one of the most fundamental ones is having people in the room who've thought about this stuff before. Because cultures... spread a little bit like yogurt cultures. We infect people with how we're feeling. And if there's enough of us who are feeling this is important, we're taking this seriously and we really, really want to listen to one another.
We want this to be the kind of meeting where everybody's voice gets heard. Then that kind of transmits itself in some weird magical way. And so not to say that, well, you use magic, of course. So having enough people who are taking responsibility for and holding the space, who've got a sense of this is how we want to do things.
Creating processes where people get to listen, but not too much, and where they get to speak, but not too much. So using facilitation. So that it's not just the people who are confident, or the loudest voices who get to speak, but where quiet people get space too. And also, creating different ways for people to express themselves.
So again, like I was saying before, you know, some of us are really, really comfortable going on at length with chat. Whereas others might actually prefer to draw, or might prefer to do interpretive dance. And I think we're away, we're away from that. But actually, there is something about using the arts, you know, and that happens loads in other cultures.
When my husband works in Kenya, when they take a break in the meeting, everybody sings. Everybody gets up and sings and dances. That's how you take a break. And the kind of dropping of petty issues and of tiredness. And of distraction and the bringing of everybody into the same space in the same moment feeling like we're together.
That something like that does is like we have so much to learn from other cultures. And again, I think it's a while before that will be the way that we're expecting to do things in our communities. But I bloody well want to work towards it because it's important. It's really important. You know, if you ask somebody, would you change your job next week?
You're going to be an MSP, you know most people were going no way because they know how toxic and stressful that kind of work is, but making our collective decisions should be something that we all feel like being involved in, and obviously sometimes it's going to be boring, but it is something about ways to make these processes feel more approachable, feel more fun, feel more engaging.
[00:44:51] Speaker 3: We are doing some leaf printing to make a big banner for the park. This is a fern. They've all, it's just a bunch of stuff that I've collected up and pressed and dried out. And then if we pop it onto the fabric over here.
[00:45:07] Kaska Hempel: So, how come you're involved in this?
[00:45:10] Speaker 3: I live in Torry.
And, like, the park, we walked around here loads during lockdown and everything so quite familiar with the place and enjoyed spending time here. So I've been sort of involved with the campaign to save the park and I knew somebody who was part of organising this thing and she asked if I want to come down and do like some, I'm also an artist, a textile artist so...
[00:45:32] Kaska Hempel: Oh wonderful, hence the banner.
[00:45:33] Speaker 3: Hence the banner.
Are you coming? Are you coming? Right, I'll show, I'll
show. You can have a go at that.
My hands are
messy. Yeah, I'm not very good at keeping clean with this. There we go. Should we have a look? Oh, that's lovely. You can see all the nice little veins from the
leaf in there. That's very cool.
Did you want to help me?
We carry on colouring in all the letters using the leaves. Does that sound good?
[00:46:10] Speaker 2: If you just arrived in this morning, we were looking at all the problems that Torry faces. And what do we want? On the tree there, you can see the problems.
They came out in small groups. And on the second tree, you've got what we need.
So that's what you miss, young lady. But instead of that, you're gathering all that to just go with it. And we're going to go into a session now.
[00:46:31] Kaska Hempel: After lunch, people gathered again to hear more on St Fittick's Park situation, this time staying in the assembly tent to hear from a number of speakers with relevant experience.
I've selected the most powerful excerpts from their presentations here. Despite being invited, neither the Energy Transition Zone company nor the council representatives turned up to contribute. Instead, Eva kicked off the session on behalf of ETZ, drawing on their contributions elsewhere. She donned a hard hat to better get into the role.
There's a little bit of generator noise in the background, which was used to power the laptop with her presentation.
[00:47:14] Eva Schonveld: Maggie McGinlay, ETZ Chief Executive, said on Radio Scotland yesterday that a small part of St Fittick's Park is needed by ETZ because of its location next to Aberdeen South Harbour. ETZ will work closely with the community to minimise the development of St Fittick's Park But maximize the impact in terms of jobs in a way that ensures ETZ are protecting and enhancing biodiversity and looking at other facilities that will enhance the park overall.
My hat is off, I'm not ETZ anymore.
[00:47:50] Kaska Hempel: Next up was Hannah from Grampian Community Law Centre. A part of Robert Gordon University's Law School.
She's been working with the community on challenging the rezoning of St Fittick's.
[00:48:02] Hannah: So, obviously the planning process, as many people who have become involved with St Fittick's Park have found out, is not particularly user friendly. It is very tricky to use and understand. And it is not made for the lone person. So we have this process, which is designed to be democratic, where we have a new local development plan comes into play every once in a while. And around about 2019, 2020, we had the emerging local development plan for Aberdeen.
But as the new plan emerged, there was very quickly decided amongst decision makers that the park would have a different use. Obviously, things had developed with the port so we had the port taking over the Bay of Nigg and starting to creep, and then the powers that be decided, actually, that park looks just fine for a load of industrial units, so we'll have a bit of that as well. And obviously there's some money behind it.
So, I guess it feels a wee bit like a fait accompli. You know, it must feel like that to the community. It feels that there's no hope. We're done here. It's, you know, the decisions made. But actually, you know, we've been working for months now with the Friends of St Fittick's group to understand what legal avenues there are to challenge this.
And we have got avenues that we're investigating. So, this is not the end. This is very much the beginning. And it's going to be a long road ahead. That's a big process. I've just been through it with another community campaign and it's stressful. And it's time consuming. But if we don't stand up to these things, then no land in Scotland is safe, as Richard very wisely said on Radio Scotland yesterday.
[00:50:04] Speaker 1: Do you want to just turn to the person next to you, just because you've heard two quite different presentations. Just take a moment to think, to share what that feels like, having listened to the person with the hat, and then to Hannah, yeah? What did you get out of that? What were the differences in what was being said?
What were the different feelings with that? Just turn to the person next to you, just for a moment. Yeah.
[00:50:27] Scott Herritt: So my name is Scott Herritt. So I'm here representing Defence Sympathetics, which is this sort of campaign group, what got set up to protect the park. So, I moved to Torry about two and a half years ago, and I can remember going down into the park, and it was just before the, obviously the harbour's been getting built.
But I can remember going down into the park one day, a bit like today, walking down, and it's a really sunny day, walking down the hill, and there's just this natural amphitheater bowl looking out to the bayonet, and I just thought this is amazing. Like, this is an amazing place. And I basically ended up living here.
And so now, if you go down there, that is gone. That is all gone. Even though it's in the water, it's affected the park. And that's what's gonna happen if they take a third of that park and stick a long, big factory in which no one knows what it's for. So, I'm really, really, really angry. And I'm really angry because of obviously what's happening.
But I'm also angry because ETZ Limited decided not to come and look people in the eye. So I actually helped put another Assembly on which was more focused on basically looking at this idea of a community asset transfer of the park. And two years ago we asked them to come and present their plans.
And they said that the plans weren't ready so they didn't want to come. Since that time, it's been two years, and they've said exactly the same thing. So, I'm going to leave that up to your own conclusions, like what that actually means. It's not about any transition, it's about a private land grab of our land, of public land.
We all own this land, collectively, in common. That is what it's about. And that happens, not just in Aberdeen, that happens across the world. And we need to stop that, and the only people who are going to stop that is people like you. And I appreciate there's people, there's a mixture of people in from Torry and from outside of Torry.
This is happening in your communities as well. But the only way to change that is... likes of you getting together, wherever your communities are, and trying to sort of do something about it, and not relying on people in suits, in big offices to try and do something about it. It's only going to change if we do something about it.
As you probably can recognise from my voice, I'm not from Aberdeen, I'm from Grimsby. And so Grimsby's a place where it's like transitioned, and it's transitioned from fishing to basically nothing. And so it's had a big impact on parts of town which I grew up in. And so I think I just wanted to sort of highlight is that the Friends of St Fitticks support the real need for an energy transition and this idea of a just transition. And Aberdeen itself has gone through lots of different transitions. So, you've had like, obviously you had the granite industries, the ship building industries, the mills, the fishing, and then obviously you went into oil.
And so all those transitions have been imposed on the people, and the people have been in control of those transitions, essentially the same people who want to control this transition now. We have to find a way to control that and direct it so it's actually to the benefits and to the needs of people.
So whatever comes next, we need to try to find a way that we're sort of part and parcel of what happens. And I think, why not start that in here, in Torry? This, what we're doing today. That's what should happen. It should happen everywhere. So that's what I'm going to say.
I'm just wondering, do you want to say anything?
[00:54:18] Speaker 1: It really angers me that we've been selected yet again to sacrifice our space and our heritage and our nature for money, and I'm really pissed off about it. Sorry, I get a bit emotional.
If you all know me, you know I do cry a bit. So to say we are now responsible for Aberdeen's thriving economy if this zone goes ahead, and that's a hell of a responsibility to put on the community. If you don't give us this, Aberdeen won't fall. That is the message that we've been getting.
[00:54:57] Adrian Croft: My name is Adrian Croft and I'm a GP. I am the Clinical Lead at Torry Medical Practice. I'm the director of the Ribbidy Medical Group, which owns the practice. So, a couple of years ago, me and my colleagues decided we needed to write an open letter. Addressed essentially to the council and to the Scottish Government.
To explain why we were astounded and shocked at the decision to change the planning regulations and to plan for industrialization of the park. We have, sadly a life expectancy that's like 13 years less than the West End in this area of Banagas. You have a healthy life expectancy, more than 20, 25 years even, compared with the rest of the city, second to the West End. I mean, those are massive, massive differences.
But the evidence internationally shows that the benefits of green space are most marked in communities that have the worst health. The Scottish Government has polished hugely on green space, on the benefits of green space.
We urgently need massive investment for the energy and industrial transition. But this is not the technology to do it. This is not the place to do it. And this is definitely not the way to do it. I mean, we'd love to see our money going into technologies that are proven. Things that can deliver immediate, tangible benefits to our local communities. Like insulating our houses. The houses here are frequently very small, very cold, very damp.
So... they could quickly do something there that would massively improve insulation, for instance, in the community. And how cheap compared to the money they're pouring into this.
[00:56:50] Kaska Hempel: This is, of course, just a very short snapshot of the process, and only some of the issues that we're focused on. The afternoon continued to explore questions about why these problems keep happening, and how can Torry reclaim the power to make this a healthy community to grow up in?
Amongst all of the presentations, there was a lot of conversation and contribution from the audience. The format was varied across the day, and many voices were heard and recorded, just like Eva promised. The proceedings were also beautifully summarised in visual notes by Graphic Artist Rosie Bailuzzi.
You can see some of that record on the Torry People's Assembly social media channels which I linked in the show notes. At the end of the day, I asked a couple of others what they thought about the process.
[00:57:45] David McCubbin: My name is David McCubbin. I work for Third Sector Interface. Moray. Just started last month. I'm a Project Coordinator with a Just Transition project in Moray, which is part of the wider Aberdeenshire, Aberdeen City. A project that's been coordinated by Nescan.
I've come here today to volunteer just to help set up and man the welcome desk but also just to see how an Assembly works and learn because although we're not doing Assemblies, we are doing deliberative events with the different communities in Moray that want to engage and have those conversations about whatever it might be and it isn't this top down, you know, whether it's government or councils or an organisation, so it's trying to get people involved so that they feel part of the process and the decision making.
It's very easy for people to not want to engage or say, well there's no point in being involved because I'm not going to make a difference but if we can show that you can make a difference it will inspire people and I think communities are looking at other communities to see what are they doing and then that spurs them on it's that kind of snowball effect.
[00:58:52] Kaska Hempel: What's the most useful thing you saw today and during the day?
[00:58:55] David McCubbin: What I really like about it is it feels very friendly and informal. There's no barriers. It's open to all. There's the entertainment for the children. There's nobody suited and booted. It just feels accessible to everybody. And you could see some people were coming on their own and people would go up and speak to them.
So you were given the opportunity to mingle. But nothing's forced and nobody's being made to say or do anything they don't want to. I know sometimes when I go to things and you think I just want to listen. I don't necessarily want the spotlight shining down on me or to be, you know, given a mic to go up in front of everybody because there's the opportunity to write stuff down, you know, the trees they're doing and the leaves and it's sort of open to all because this isn't everybody's cup of tea.
And this is really nice as well, outdoors. And, you know, they're in the place that one of the biggest challenges being faced at the minute and it's not just sort of in a community hall somewhere, it's here and the fact they did the tour earlier and that was really well attended so you could see this is where the proposals are.
I like the fact as well it's drop in and out so you can come for the whole day and I know ideally that's what you want. Actually some people might come and think oh I'll just, I'll drop in briefly and then oh this is all right actually and I'm gonna stay and then they stay and then they might come back tomorrow.
[01:00:10] Sarah Stroud: My name is Sarah Stroud and I'm a filmmaker. Yeah, so my feeling was like sometimes it felt like I was in group therapy. So it was really interesting like I loved when the chap speaking about psychotherapy and like for me I was really aware of the layers of the connections we have with the past and how we relive the cycles of things. I was just really aware of it being quite a therapeutic space. And how, you know, you're being given time so that you can speak and then people listen. Like that's something that you do quite often in 12 step programmes. It felt like really quite safe and a really nice nurturing space.
[01:00:47] Fiona McIntyre: Yeah, and you were allowed to be angry you know, I was saying that I felt like I was picking up on people's emotions and feeling things that I didn't think I expected to feel but through that process probably have healed a little bit as well, like kind of, or at least there's a sense that there's people to share with. Kind of thing, like, yeah.
My name's Fiona McIntyre. I run Greyhawk Bay, which is a local charity in Torry that aims to connect communities with our coast and heritage. We have a cafe up in Torry Battery, which has the best view of bottlenose dolphins. Because this is the community we serve, it's really important to us that maybe we can share what we have been able to do, but also just to kind of really get to know what are the issues and really...
Yeah, I kind of support the community in that, and even just in listening. And again, seeing the children and the old men, like, seeing the cross section of, like, so many different people, and also people that have travelled up for the event.
[01:01:49] Kaska Hempel: Right, we're interfering with serving of dinner, so we probably should back out.
But thank you for chatting.
That was the Assembly gathering. Lots and lots of going on in it. The second day was... It's equally busy with its focus on hearing input on how from local experience and then discussing strategies, next steps, and drafting an action plan. According to Rosie's graphic record, by the end of the assembly, a few ideas for practical action started emerging.
From community litter picks, basketball tournaments and nature activities at the park to raise awareness and make it an irresistible place for all in Torry, to door knocking campaigns to reach people in their own homes, discussing heating costs and time banking ideas, to a vision for a community led Torry Retrofit Project, creating local jobs alongside warmer homes.
Of course, the Assembly was just one point in the journey for this community. As someone said on the day, it's a long journey, and this is only the beginning, and there's been many beginnings. But it'd be interesting to see how this beginning may go forward. I asked Eva to comment on what needs to happen next for such people led Assemblies to turn into productive beginnings.
[01:03:15] Eva Schonveld: We talk about there being three main pathways. So, pathway one is what the community could do for itself. Pathway two is like stuff that we want to happen that needs to interact with current power holders. That might be the council, that might be national government, that might be funders. But these are things that are going to take more work and more preparation.
Pathway three is a really interesting pathway that's sort of imaginary at the moment, which is to do with the kind of things that I've been saying is like, what could communities achieve? If they decided to step into responsibility for decision making. What could we achieve together if we connected our Assemblies and used deliberation to have really, really juicy, generative conversations about how we could do things really differently.
How we could change our communities and change our way of life in a way that means everybody gets their basic needs met. Which they currently don't, and also where we're not polluting the planet that we rely on to survive. These are kind of absolutely crucial questions of the moment, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be us in the places that we live who come up with the responses to that.
Because fundamentally... that's what humans are for. Humans are for living in a place, having families and friends, and cooperating and collaborating with the natural world. We've given our power away to this kind of system, which feels impenetrable, and it also feels inevitable, because it's all we've ever known.
But it's not how humans have always lived. We cannot continue to live like this. And we all know that. There's got to be changes. And to be kind of creative and collaborative and cooperative in how we make those changes so that people don't get hurt in the process. Feels like, well, this is the window that we've got to do it that way.
And it's much better than the alternatives.
[01:05:19] Kaska Hempel: Great. Yes, great call to action. So, organising something like this, it sounds really involved as a process. Is there help available, or funding?
[01:05:31] Eva Schonveld: I think this is one of the really big stumbling blocks with this whole thing, is that it takes a lot to organise and there isn't currently money around for people to do Assemblies.
It may be that as a result of this... Scottish Government will extend, because this is coming from Just Transition funding, which is being piloted in the North East and may be rolled out across the whole country. They may decide that Assemblies are a good thing, community run Assemblies, are a good thing, so there may be money coming from that.
And there may be money coming through the climate hubs. If communities are saying, we want to have Assemblies, and this is what we're applying for grants to do, if the hubs think that those are important, then they would be able to put funds that way. And the last thing I would say is that we've got a training and we're planning to run a training up in the North East.
Basically, it's an assembly catalysts training. It's for people who might then go off and set up a steering group and do all this kind of outreach. And we're going to develop, hopefully, if we get the funding, next year, a facilitators training, which we would work with Go Deep, who's another one of the partners in the NESCAN process.
[01:06:41] Kaska Hempel: How do you take... the ideas forward. Do you have any feeling for that and what would be the most powerful thing that people can do or an outcome from an Assembly that can happen?
[01:06:53] Eva Schonveld: Well, this Assembly in Torry will have this declaration that will include a plan. Or at least the beginnings of a plan for how we're going to move forward.
And that might include small local initiatives that local people have, you know, discovered that there's other people who are keen on whatever it is. And also requests or slash demands to the council of things that need to be taken up in Torry. And all of that requires following up. And so for a big chunk of the money that we're putting forward for years two and three is for somebody to work in Torry basically to drive forward the outcomes of the Assembly.
Because before we went to Torry, we just had no sense of how little capacity there is in some communities who just had the stuffing knocked out of them. And while there might be, there might be a group of people who could just carry on, just kind of integrate this with the work that they're already doing for nothing on behalf of the community.
And I expect that is what will happen to begin with. There's a real need to have resource for individuals or small groups who can take things forward on behalf of their communities. Being fed into by these broad community led processes.
[01:08:14] Kaska Hempel: This is by no means an exhaustive guide in deliberative democracy.
So if you're interested in learning more about how this kind of work can help your own community, NESCAN will be shortly publishing a set of resources relating to the first round of deliberative democratic process pilots across the communities in the North East, including... the community led Assemblies like the one in Torry.
You can also join assembly catalyst training in Aberdeen starting on the 6th of October. SCCAN has invited Open Source to additionally deliver such training across Scotland in January, so look out for registration details coming out on our channels later this year. I've put the relevant links in the episode notes for you, including more information about the ongoing fight to save St Fittick's Park. I'm fascinated to find out how this story unfolds in the future. I'll leave the last words today to Torry Bears, knitted by Lynne for her table at the welcoming tent.
[01:09:18] Lynne Restrup: So, there's just a bit of a play on the word Torry. We are the Torry Bears. It is our territory and we love its history. Please share your own story at Torry People's Assembly.
Together we can be victorious. It's just a bit of fun to show that it's not all serious and doom and gloom. We can have a laugh for ourselves.
[01:10:01] Kaska Hempel: Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please give it a like and share it with others. It'll really help us reach a wider audience. If something exciting is happening in your own community, be sure to let us know so that we can help you tell your own story. You can drop our Story Weavers a line at stories at SCCAN.scot.
It's SCCAN, S C C A N. scot S C O T
We also offer training and mini grant support to community storytellers. To keep up to date with our offerings and everything SCCAN, check out our website at SCCAN. scot or find us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Or simply sign up to the newsletter.
Monday Sep 25, 2023
Monday Sep 25, 2023
Today’s Everyday Changemaker is Peter Moffatt, Transition Black Isle trustee and a man behind its website. Our Story Weaver, Kaska Hempel, caught up with him at SCCAN’s Northern Gathering in Inverness on the 16th of September.
Credits:
Interview and audio production: Kaska Hempel
Resources:
Transition Black Isle https://www.transitionblackisle.org/
Transition Network (worldwide) https://transitionnetwork.org/
Transition Together (Britain) https://transitiontogether.org.uk/ (SCCAN is part of this project/network)
Transition Black Isle Million Miles Project 2012-15 https://www.transitionblackisle.org/million-miles-project.asp
Million Miles Project in The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/sep/23/carbon-cutting-transport-scheme-helping-black-isle-go-green-scottish-highlands
21 Stories of Transition (book produced for COP21), including a story about the Million Miles Project https://transitionnetwork.org/resources/21-stories-of-transition-pdf-to-download/
Highland Good Food Partnership https://highlandgoodfood.scot/
Highland Community Waste Partnership https://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/highland-community-waste-partnership/
James Rebanks English Pastoral https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/03/english-pastoral-by-james-rebanks-review-how-to-look-after-the-land
Gorge Monbiot Regenesis https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/05/regenesis-by-george-monbiot-review-hungry-for-real-change
Transcript
[00:00:00] Kaska Hempel: It's Kaska, your Story Weaver. What a weekend it's been. Still buzzing after our members Northern Gathering on the 16th of September. I met some amazing people on the day and workshopped all sorts of ways in which stories and storytelling can help us all think about a better future for our communities.
As always, there was simply not enough time to chat to everyone about everything. But since I already travelled all the way to the north, I also took time to visit several amazing community groups around Inverness for Everyday Changemakers interviews. And honestly, I can't wait to share those soon in the podcast as well as a wee place based audio tour I'm going to put together for you.
I road tested the tour by cycling around the project locations and I think the stories will make for a fantastic way to explore Inverness on a bike, either in person or online. But today I wanted to share my chat with Peter Moffat from Transition Black Isle, which is based on Black Isle, just north of Inverness.
As usual, you can find out more about the stories and resources behind this community group from links I popped into the show notes for you. I met Peter at the gathering itself, where he was holding an information stall for his group. And at lunchtime, we stepped outside the Merkinch Community Centre to record our conversation.
[00:01:26] Peter Moffatt: I'm Peter Moffatt. I'm one of the trustees of Transition Black Isle.
I have been since 2015. I live at the eastern end of the Black Isle, not far from Muir of Ord, two fields away from the Black Isle Dairy, which is a very, it's one of the few dairy farms in the north of Scotland. It has an enterprising young owner who runs a farm shop.
[00:01:51] Kaska Hempel: Tell me about a favourite place where you live.
[00:01:55] Peter Moffatt: There's a walk we do just round the fields from the back of the house, which goes along at one stage, an avenue of beach trees looking over the fields towards the Beauly Firth. And it's a wonderful view. And it's just walking around the fields, and it's great.
The other way we sometimes go is down over the fields to Conon Bridge, and then along the River Conon. There's a lovely old graveyard a mile or two along there, which not many people know about. But it's a wonderful place to go and think about the people who've gone before you basically, and a very pleasant, enjoyable walk.
[00:02:32] Kaska Hempel: How come you got involved in community climate action? What's been your journey?
[00:02:37] Peter Moffatt: I can't think of anything particular that sort of started me off.
I joined Transition Black Isle as a result of talking to somebody at a stall they were running at an event in Muir of Ord, which I think was something to do with a transport proposal and went on from there really. I admitted to the fact that I had worked with computers and I promptly got captured as it were because the person that currently ran the website lived in Aberdeen and wasn't very active.
So first thing I did was become responsible for editing the Transition Black Isle website, which i've been doing ever since. I'm not sure how many people actually look at it regularly, but I do try and keep it updated with information about climate change and climate activities and government policy and the council, what the council's doing.
I quite enjoy it, but I can't go on doing it forever, obviously. But there's nobody looking... To come and take over.
[00:03:31] Kaska Hempel: What about before you joined Transition? Were you interested in climate issues or environmental issues before then?
[00:03:38] Peter Moffatt: I can't remember. I've always been interested in the sort of countryside issues. My father was a farm manager, so I grew up interested in farming and used to go and work on a cousin's farm during the summer holidays when I was a student and on the farm at home as well.
So I suppose that's interest in nature and the outdoors and I've also been interested in mountaineering all my life. Where there's concern with climate change, I suppose it grew up, as it grew up generally, not very long ago. Despite the fact that people have been warning about it for the last 50 years, people only generally started to take notice relatively recently.
I remember being particularly struck by Greta Thunberg's initial school strike for climate as it was when she sat down outside the Swedish parliament. And she was on the website as soon as she did that, and I've been supporting her as strongly as I can ever since. So setting a fine example.
I don't know honestly where my personal concern with climate change as such began. Possibly as a result of joining Transition Black Isle.
[00:04:50] Kaska Hempel: When I say transition movement, what's the first thing that comes to your mind?
[00:04:55] Peter Moffatt: The idea of trying to move from the status quo business as usual consumerist society to a more sustainable way of life basically. And that was the founding idea of the transition movement. When it began in Totnes, how much transition is actually taking place. Some of the ideas that they had aren't really being applied, I don't think.
There were transition groups were supposed to have energy reduction plans which would progressively reduce the amount of energy consumed in the local area and change its nature. So it was more from renewables. That's not really happening, which is not to say that Transition Black Isle and other groups, whether they're transition groups formally or not, aren't doing a lot of good work.
They are and there's an amazing number of them, but I can't help feeling that for all the good they're doing, you know, merely scratching the surface of what actually needs to be done.
[00:05:53] Kaska Hempel: What makes you the proudest in terms of achievements? of Transition Black Isle.
[00:05:59] Peter Moffatt: Major achievement was something they called the Million Miles Project which was a project aimed at reducing car use on the Black Isle by a million miles over a period of two years I think the project ran and it was amazingly successful, a lot of support.
It actually became the number one story in a book of 20 stories published by the transition movement, I think for one of the COP climate conferences. And we were quite proud of that. Apart from that, recently we are involved as partners in two very important co operative ventures. One is the Highland Good Food Partnership, which grew out of a series of online discussions which were held about two years ago I think.
The other more recent initiative is something called the Highland Community Waste Partnership, which involves eight groups throughout the Highlands. Which is led by Keep Scotland Beautiful and is aiming to raise awareness of waste and reduce waste, particularly food waste, in local communities.
A lot of good work being done. How widely it's being recognised, I'm not sure.
I mean, if you ask your average person on the Black Isle about the Highland Community Waste Partnership, I'm not sure they'd have heard of it. But perhaps that's because we're not publicising it well enough. But there is a lot of hard work being done.
[00:07:35] Kaska Hempel: Who or what inspires you personally?
[00:07:39] Peter Moffatt: That's difficult. Greta Thunberg for one. Talking about food and farming. James Rebanks. Excellent, fascinating book. English Pastoral I think it was called.
He is trying to recognise the sort of traditional values in farming as it ought to be practiced. Involved in the landscape and the countryside, he's in the Lake District, so it's obviously a certain type of land, sheep farming, which some people would say we should do away with, but if it's there, then he seems to set a fine example of how to do it in the right sort of attitude to the land and so on.
Somebody else I would mention is George Monbiot, writer and journalist and activist. Everything he says is pretty sensible. Some people are a bit dubious about his idea that we should replace all beef and dairy farming with industrially fermented protein generated from microbes, fed on carbon dioxide and hydrogen, which apparently you can eat.
It doesn't sound, it would be very appetizing, shall we say. But the chances of doing away with the entire meat and dairy industry, which people say we need to do in order if we're going to reduce environmental damage and feed people adequately, is well, it's a big ask and, it's difficult to see how it could ever come about.
I was just reading Tim Spector saying the same thing, basically, about the need to drastically reduce the amount of land devoted to producing crops to feed cattle for beef.
And we should all be eating more plant food instead. Which is undoubtedly true and unlikely to come about, unfortunately, which is one of my reasons for not being a climate optimist.
[00:09:31] Kaska Hempel: Since we're talking about meat and not eating meat, do you have a favourite vegetarian or vegan dish?
[00:09:36] Peter Moffatt: I make something which is called by the uninviting name of Veggie Grot. Which is in fact a vegetable it's a sort of... vegetable crumble, really with a sort of cheese and breadcrumbs topping. And it contains whatever vegetables come to hand, lightly cooked in the oven. It's popular with our friends.
I take it to mountaineering club meets and they all eat it eagerly enough. I'm not completely vegetarian, i'm certainly not vegan, but the idea of a vegan cheese or vegan sausages, I find difficult to accept. I know they exist. All our sandwiches today were vegan, I'm told. But we don't eat a lot of meat.
My wife and I are largely sort of 75 percent vegetarian, I would say, at least. And I like vegetables. I grow vegetables in the garden. And it's very satisfying to eat your own produce.
[00:10:25] Kaska Hempel: Where in the world are you happiest?
[00:10:28] Peter Moffatt: Where am I happiest? In a sunlit wood, preferably with a burn flowing by, or on the top of a Scottish mountain.
[00:10:42] Kaska Hempel: Now the final question, I always ask people to imagine the place they live in, ten years from now.
Imagine that we've done everything possible to limit the impact of climate change and create a better and fairer world.
And share one memory from that future with our listeners.
[00:11:02] Peter Moffatt: Quite honestly, I think it will be very little different from what it is now. If, some of the ideas that have been proposed in the local place plan that is currently being prepared for the Black Isle and will be presented to the council at the end of this month. If some of them were to come to fruition, then the Black Isle would have a better transport system.
It would have lots of affordable housing available for local people. It would have more local food production. Better care for old people. And safer cycle routes and so on. Transition Black Isle has been working for years on an active travel route, cycle path basically, between Avoch and Munlochy, and we have been frustrated.
It's a question of getting a hold of the land, and there has been reluctance in some quarters to make land available.
[00:12:03] Kaska Hempel: And if you can share one sound or smell or taste of that future, what would it be?
[00:12:08] Peter Moffatt: I would like to think it was the sound of Curlews and we used to hear them over the fields outside the house. We were in Shetland a little while ago looking out over the pasture which should have been busy with Curlews and Lapwings and there was nothing there at all. Whether anything is likely to change to the extent that these birds become more numerous than they are at the moment, I don't know.
It's unlikely, but it would be nice. I would love to hear Lapwings calling over the fields outside our house on a regular basis.
[00:12:38] Kaska Hempel: I'm going to ask you if there's anything else that you wanted to add for our listeners.
[00:12:44] Peter Moffatt: If you're interested and concerned about climate change and so on, just think whether you could make that little bit extra effort and volunteer for organisations like Transition Black Isle. There are plenty of other organisations on the Black Isle and elsewhere. Offer to volunteer, offer to become a trustee maybe and take a bit of responsibility.
It's not very much. Put your good intentions into practice. Transition Black Isle has an online newsletter with a subscriber list of about 480 people. It has a membership of about 150. It has six trustees, needs more, and it is sometimes difficult to get people, especially young people, to volunteer to help with activities.
There's a serious lack of young people coming forward, whether it's because they think it's an old fogey's group. I don't know. But we need more involvement by people who are obviously concerned, but just need to take a step forward and put that concern into voluntary action and actually help the climate movement on its way.
Friday Sep 01, 2023
Friday Sep 01, 2023
Kaska Hempel, our Story Weaver, interviews Tom Nockolds, who is one of the people behind the community-driven retrofit project, Loco Home Retrofit, based in Glasgow.
This episode complements video recordings of presentations from the "SCCAN Member Networking and Skillshare Meet up: Talking about Retrofitting", which took place on 25 August 2023. You can find them on SCCAN YouTube channel.
Credits:
Interview and audio production: Kaska Hempel.
Resources:
SCCAN YouTube channel with the recording from the members skillshare on community-led retrofitting, 25th August 2023: https://www.youtube.com/@scottishcommunitiesclimate6914/videos
Loco Home Retrofit https://locohome.coop/
SEDA Retrofit conference, 15-16 September 2023 https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/seda-conference-2023-progressing-retrofit-comfort-health-affordability-tickets-692329465067
Transcript
[00:00:00] Kaska Hempel: Hello, it's Kaska, one of your Story Weavers. Last Friday I attended one of SCCAN's Member Skillshares. Focused on a truly wicked problem of retrofitting our very energy inefficient Scottish homes.
[00:00:16] Kaska Hempel: Our housing stock seems to be one of the worst in Europe for energy efficiency, which makes it unhealthy, uncomfortable, and expensive to heat. Yet there's not been nearly enough progress made on this so far by our governments.
[00:00:32] Kaska Hempel: Very frustrating indeed. So, I was impressed how a couple of Scottish grassroots organisations are taking matters in their own hands. By treating this as a community problem or rather a community driven solution, and this way
[00:00:48] Kaska Hempel: Moving things ahead locally.
[00:00:50] Kaska Hempel: This inspired me to interview one of the presenters, Tom Nockolds, who's behind one of the community driven projects, Loco Home Retrofit in Glasgow. For more details on the retrofit projects themselves, you can watch recordings of the Skillshare on SCCAN's YouTube channel as soon as they're processed. And as usual, we put all the other relevant links in the episode notes for you.
[00:01:15] Kaska Hempel: And if you'd like to delve into the nitty gritty of holistic approach to retrofitting, have a look at the Scottish Ecological Design Association Conference on the subject, which is taking place in Glasgow and on Zoom on the 15th and 16th of September.
[00:01:32] Kaska Hempel: But for now, let's go back to our Everyday Changemakers story and find out what makes Tom tick.
[00:01:41] Tom Nockolds: I'm Tom Nockolds. I live in Glasgow and I'm the co-founder and co-executive Officer of Loco Home Retrofit. Loco Home Retrofit is a cooperative, as well as a community interest company whose mission is to decarbonise homes in Glasgow. And we're very focused on privately owned households. We operate in the space of retrofit, which is a bit of a technical jargonistic term. Simply means refitting, energy efficiency, and low carbon heating into existing buildings. And our mission is to make better retrofit more accessible for more people in Glasgow.
[00:02:29] Kaska Hempel: Great. That sounds amazing. why Loco?
[00:02:33] Tom Nockolds: We struggled with a name for a little while. I was saying to Chris, co-founder, I was saying to Chris, you know, let's not give ourselves a boring name like Glasgow, Retrofit Co-op.
[00:02:47] Tom Nockolds: And he was really on board with that idea. And we eventually settled on Loco because it's a bit of a play on low carbon 'cause we are a climate change action organisation, but it's also about local community. And thirdly, and very much last and least, we did acknowledge that Loco does have a meaning in some other languages. And we wanted to acknowledge that what we were doing was a little bit crazy, you know?
[00:03:18] Kaska Hempel: Because
[00:03:18] Kaska Hempel: Loco is Spanish for a bit mad, isn't it?
[00:03:22] Tom Nockolds: It might be a mild way of putting it, so I'm a bit hesitant to focus too much on the Loco with that definition. Mostly it's a play on low carbon, local community.
[00:03:33] Kaska Hempel: Yeah, it reminds me of Locomotive.
[00:03:35] Kaska Hempel: So it's like putting something in motion as well.
[00:03:37] Tom Nockolds: That's right. Exactly. We're all about getting people moving on their retrofit journey.
[00:03:42] Tom Nockolds: We also grappled whether or not we would lean into the jargonistic term retrofit or try and avoid it. And obviously we decided to lean into it. So it is a bit of a challenge to get out there and start talking to people about retrofit, and we need to approach that carefully, but it's in our name, and that for us is a bit of an icebreaker.
[00:04:03] Kaska Hempel: Great way to start a conversation.
[00:04:06] Kaska Hempel: Tell me maybe about a favourite place where you live, or part of the project that you are involved with. That's your favourite part.
[00:04:15] Tom Nockolds: So I've been living in Glasgow for three years. You hear from my voice that I'm Australian. And I've only been living in Scotland for four years. I live in the south side of Glasgow. I live in a suburb called Strathbungo, which is actually a very small suburb. Many people have heard of it. It's got a very high profile. But it's very small and the way that I like to describe it is that particularly my part of Strathbungo, 'cause I live in a tenement building, is sandwiched between two of the largest tenement areas in Glasgow, Pollokshields and Govan Hill. And I live on a road that is one of the main thoroughfares between these two neighbourhoods.
[00:04:59] Tom Nockolds: And I myself live in a tenement area. It's a very diverse, vibrant neighbourhood. Probably the most ethnically diverse neighbourhood in Scotland. There's a huge amount going on. So when I walk out my door, there's a lot on offer. A lot of really interesting shops, lots of cool bars and cafes and things like that. But just a lot of people who bring a lot of different things to the local area. And in particular, I live very close to Queens Park, and Queens Park is one of the best parks in Glasgow in my opinion.
[00:05:38] Tom Nockolds: It's not just a Victorian era park, we're sort of parading formal gardens, but it's got a wooded area and you can just lose yourself and escape the really urban environment that exists when there's tenements. And the thing that I relearn every time I go into Queens Park is that you've got to never forget to regularly go in and be amongst the trees 'cause they have this incredible ability to de-stress you. And then, you know, later that day or the next day, I've completely forgotten.
[00:06:10] Kaska Hempel: Yes, regular detox, so important. It's so fortunate that you've got that on your doorstep.
[00:06:14] Tom Nockolds: Yeah. But a really built up urban environment with a lot of vibrancy, and very close to this amazing outdoor area of Queens Park with views over the city trees and yeah, just beautiful, beautiful location.
[00:06:31] Kaska Hempel: That sounds pretty amazing. Now, if you could briefly tell us about why you got involved in community action or climate action in this project that you set up here.
[00:06:44] Tom Nockolds: Well, for me it's always been there, this sort of voice inside of me about making a positive contribution and in particular an environmental bent. I grew up in a suburb of Sydney in Australia, suburb I grew up in, Balmain was traditionally a very working class suburb and was one of the places where the Australian Labor Party emerged. So really, I grew up immersed in an environment where labour struggles and class struggles were a feature.
My parents were very aware of this, even if they weren't themselves from that background. My dad was an academic, for example. But I didn't move into that space. I got on with life and struggling as a young adult to find my way. But it was when I was in my late thirties. I found myself working for multinational law firm in the Sydney office. Law firms are interesting. They occupy the top floors of the nicest buildings. It's a really nice working environment, and you get to work with some really amazing, intelligent people.
[00:08:00] Tom Nockolds: But it became increasingly apparent to me that I was working for the bad guys. This particular event took place where a memo went round to all staff and it said something like, you've heard about fracking and coal, steam gas extraction from the media, come along and find out what it's all about. And it was sent to all staff. There were separate mailing lists for just the legal staff. 'cause I wasn't a lawyer, I was just helping with IT and sustainability projects. So it seemed like, it was a genuine, let's explore this issue.
But when I went along, to my horror, it was actually a session for lawyers on how they could successfully navigate their client's coal and steam gas exploration license through the regulatory regime to maximize chance of success. And that for me was the big moment where it was brought up right up into my face. You're doing the right work for the wrong organisation. And I was in a fairly comfortable position at the time. I'd never been a wealthy person, but my wife had just finished a year of study and we knew that we could survive on one income and she'd got her job back. And I quit my job. Gave them the minimum amount of notice and walked out the door, and I didn't have anywhere I was going to.
[00:09:24] Tom Nockolds: I just threw myself headlong into volunteering. Lots of volunteering in my local community and for initiatives across the city. And very quickly I realised that the thing for me was community energy. And within less than a year, I was part of the team at a small workers co-op, co-founded by two amazing women. And that organisation is called Community Power Agency. And to date, they remain Australia's only dedicated support organisation, helping communities develop energy projects. I did a lot of volunteering, for one group in particular, Pingala. And, we put solar panels on the roof of craft breweries across the city, among other things. And that was lots of fun. And, yeah, I basically consider that ever since 2013, my career has been working in the field of community energy. It's just that in 2020 thereabouts, I shifted my focus from installing new energy generation to decarbonising projects. So my work with Loco Home Retrofit is still community energy, but it's about decarbonising. And reducing energy consumption.
[00:10:39] Kaska Hempel: The flip side of our energy problem, isn't it? Thank you for sharing that.That's pretty drastic journey, but, it feels like you're in a much better space right now.
[00:10:44] Tom Nockolds: I mean, it was the best decision I've ever made in my life, career wise. And I rapidly found myself working with the most amazing people, doing the most rewarding work. Feeling like I was making a big contribution, never earning less money. It's been wonderful.
[00:11:11] Kaska Hempel: Brilliant. Hey, sales pitch for community work. Great. Now you've already defined retrofit for us when you're introducing your project. But what does it mean to you?
[00:11:23] Kaska Hempel: Yeah, I think for me, the main thing that I think about and feel when I hear the word retrofit, it's about making our existing buildings fit for the future. We're gonna need to make our homes a lot more resilient because of increasingly you know, violent weather. And before that, we need to make sure that they're first of all well maintained, but also in the future we're gonna need to make sure that our houses are not causing damage to the environment, such as contributing to climate change through carbon emissions, and healthy spaces for the occupants. So when I hear the word retrofit, I think of homes that are fit for the future, that are well maintained and resilient, that are healthy, comfortable and zero carbon.
[00:12:27] Kaska Hempel: What advice would you give to people who want to learn more about retrofit and how communities can get involved in this?
[00:12:36] Tom Nockolds: First of all, one thing that I don't think I've explained is that we are a particular type of retrofit organisation. We're a local community intermediary. And let me just sort of unpack that a little bit.
[00:12:47] Tom Nockolds: We firmly believe that because retrofit of homes is going to be difficult for any given homeowner, disruptive and expensive, that it's vital that people are hearing from people in their own community about what the benefits of retrofit will be, how to go about it. It's also relevant that buildings are subtly different in different areas.
So in Scotland, for example, in Glasgow, we've got traditional buildings built out of sandstone using particular techniques. Whereas in Aberdeen, they've got traditional buildings built out of granite using specific techniques. So that local context really does matter. And we also know that from looking at previous programmes such as the Green Deal, the Ill-Fated Westminster programme. Top down, centralised government approaches to energy efficiency and environmental behaviour change generally don't work.
[00:13:59] Tom Nockolds: I mean, they're necessary. They're a necessary ingredient and piece in the puzzle, but they don't actually work in terms of delivering the outcomes, achieving their goals, and recognising the needs of local people, motivating the local people to take action. So that's a local and community piece. And intermediary refers to the fact that there's simultaneously a lack of demand, a lack of households who are wanting to retrofit their homes. And there's also a lack of supply. There's lack of installers, tradespeople that have that specific knowledge about taking a whole house approach to go much deeper and get a home onto zero carbon heating. And so we think the best type of organisation to bridge the gap between homeowners and the supply chain is a locally based organisation who's rooted in the community.
[00:14:57] Tom Nockolds: So your question was, what advice would we have to someone starting out on this journey? First piece of advice is understand that need to find a way of embedding yourself in the community. I'm kind of thinking you are from the local community, and that gives you the greatest strength to be able to connect with all of the diverse aspects of what makes up that local community. And you need to do that in order to be successful. You don't necessarily need to have the technical skills, 'cause those technical skills are transferable. But it's the more difficult work is building the community connections between yourself and your organisation and all the different groups and all the individual householders. That's actually the difficult work. That'd be very difficult for an external organisation to get into focus on the community organising aspect without being blind to the technical skills that you need that you can potentially bring in from elsewhere.
[00:15:59] Kaska Hempel: Where in the world are you happiest?
[00:16:04] Tom Nockolds: it's funny, there's two places where that's the case. The one which is most obvious to me, is I grew up in a house which had a fairly open door policy, and we weren't a big family by any stretch. My parents were effectively migrants to Sydney and I'm the youngest of three, but nothing makes me happier than being in my home that's full of people, family and friends.
[00:16:36] Tom Nockolds: We had the great privilege of hosting Christmas a couple of years ago in our house, and the place was insanely full of people. It was stressful and noisy and hectic, but it confirmed something I really definitely already knew is that I'm happiest when my house is full of people. The second place I'm happiest is when I'm out in nature and in particular amongst trees.
[00:16:58] Kaska Hempel: For this last question, I ask everybody this, is for you to imagine the place you live in now, 10 years from now, and imagine that we have all done everything possible to limit the effects of climate change and make it a fairer and better place to be.
[00:17:17] Kaska Hempel: Here in Scotland, and you look around you 10 years from now,
[00:17:22] Kaska Hempel: share one impression or memory from that future with us.
[00:17:27] Tom Nockolds: The first thing is that the neighbourhood is a lot greener than it currently is. There's a lot more trees right in the heart of the urban environment, and that's because space has been made for them. The second thing is that it's a lot quieter. That's because trees have a dampening effect on sound.
[00:17:49] Tom Nockolds: But also because one of the main ways that space has been found for them is by replacing many journeys that are made by car with quieter, lower carbon, more sustainable forms of active travel. There's a lot more people walking and riding bicycles around. There's probably a lot more of those electric scooters too.
[00:18:10] Tom Nockolds: But the point is it's a lot quieter. And then the third thing is, I wouldn't say there's more people on the street, but there's more vibrancy around that. There's more people speaking to each other, saying hello to each other. So I consider that one of the main reasons why I'm doing the work is to build community. I'm not saying community doesn't exist in any given place. It does. I'm just saying I think our communities need to have stronger links, stronger connections. People need to know each other. That's one of the most important aspects of resilience as we step into a really uncertain future. So that's my vision. People know each other, well connected. It's quieter and it's definitely a lot greener.
[00:18:50] Kaska Hempel: Is there anything else you would like to share with the listeners that we haven't covered?
[00:18:55] Tom Nockolds: I think it's essential that we reduce carbon coming from our homes and I'm definitely very sceptical about any message around decarbonisation that it's all about individual choice. It's not all about individual choice. This has got to be about systemic change and about individual choice. One of the most important things we can do as individuals, whether we're renters or homeowners, is to be aware of just how much carbon is coming from heating our homes, homes in this cold climate of Scotland, and to demand that something be done about that.
Now, if you're a renter, the best thing you can do is to join a tenants union and speak to your landlord about them making your home more energy efficient and moving towards zero carbon heating. If you're a homeowner, the best thing you can do is to get yourself onto a having a whole house plan for retrofit. And that's the sort of thing our organisation can deliver. Now, if you're not in Glasgow, it's really worth considering whether or not you and some other local people should be establishing a local retrofit intermediary. Ideally structured as a co-op so that you can ensure that it's democratic, locally owned and the benefits are staying local so that you can start moving all of the homes in your area forwards on a journey towards zero carbon, getting those homes fit for the future.
[00:20:19] Kaska Hempel: Yes lets do it. Thank you so much.
[00:20:26] Tom Nockolds: Thanks Kaska for having me and yeah, it's been a real pleasure to chat.
Monday Aug 14, 2023
Monday Aug 14, 2023
Listen to an inspiring example of work by a tranditional storyteller in residence, helping community of Fittie in Aberdeen come together and face the past, present and future of the place where they live and love. Story was developed and perfomed by Cara Silversmith, with an introduction from our Story Weaver Lesley Anne.
Resources
Cara Silversmith's website: https://www.carasilversmith.com/
Cara's reflection on developing this story on her own podcast, "What of the Ground we’re standing on”: https://whatoftheground.podbean.com/e/commissioned-stories-honouring-truth-and-telling-stories-with-love/
1000 Better Stories Member of the Month: Fittie Community Development Trust https://sccan.scot/blog/member-of-the-month-the-fittie-community-development-trust/
Safe Harbour, Open Sea project https://www.openroadltd.com/projects/culture-collective/
Friday Jul 21, 2023
Friday Jul 21, 2023
Today Roz Littwin reads "Long Live Lenny", her short story creatively exploring the good work of the Edinburgh Remakery.
Roz’s story was originally published on the 1000 Better Stories blog and funded by one of our storytelling mini-grants. The grants fund contributions to 1000 Better Stories Blog and Podcast. They are open for applications now with a deadline at the end of July and another one at the end of October. Get in touch on stories@sccan.scot to find out more.
Credits:
Roz Littwin - text, recording and narrationKaska Hempel - production
Resources:
Edinburgh Remakery https://www.edinburghremakery.org.uk/
1000 Better Stories blog https://sccan.scot/1000-better-stories/1000-better-stories-blog/
Storytelling mini-grants https://sccan.scot/1000-better-stories/
Monday Jul 03, 2023
Monday Jul 03, 2023
Our Everyday Changemaker today is Ruth McLaren, Arran EcoSavvy's project and communications development officer.
Credits: Interview, recording and edit by Madeleine Scobie, Sound production by Kaska Hempel
Resources:
Arran Eco Savvy website: https://arranecosavvy.org.uk/
Green Islands Net Zero project: https://arranecosavvy.org.uk/green-islands-plans/
Project Videos
Zero Waste Cafe: https://vimeo.com/796376962/ce499f02e2
Active Travel Hub: https://vimeo.com/799647519/663c6e3da1
Community Shop: https://vimeo.com/826523465/3f3863284a?share=copy
Transcript
[00:00:00] Madeleine: Hello, I'm Madeleine Scobie and I'm SCCAN's media intern. I interviewed Ruth McLaren, who is the Project and Communications Development Officer at Arran Eco Savvy. Since 2014, Arran Eco Savvy has been working towards making Arran a greener and more sustainable island. Some other recent projects include the Green Islands Net Zero,
[00:00:24] Madeleine: the Active Travel Hub, Community Shop, and Zero Waste Cafe. I asked her to describe her favourite place to visit in Arran.
[00:00:34] Ruth: Ooh, that's a bit of a tricky question actually, because there's so many amazing places.
[00:00:39] Ruth: I'd have to say my favourite place is Glen Sannox in the north of the island.
[00:00:43] Ruth: And it's just this absolutely beautiful, kind of dramatic glen. Not too far from where I stay. And it's kind of really peaceful.
[00:00:51] Ruth: You often, you'll go from the beach, which will maybe have lots of people on it, and if you go up into the glen, it's kind of empty and don't see as many folk around, but you'll see, you know, deer. And I've seen a golden eagle in there once.
[00:01:04] Ruth: and it's just really just absolutely beautiful.
[00:01:07] Madeleine: So how did you get involved in Community Action? What's your climate journey?
[00:01:12] Ruth: I've always been very kind of interested and aware of climate change ever since I was at school, really. And it's just always been something that I've been very passionate about, but also very worried about.
[00:01:23] Ruth: And my career. I used to work, I've worked in the government, I've worked in the private sector, but I've also worked for several charities.
[00:01:31] Ruth: But I really wanted to get involved in climate action. And when I moved to Arran, I found out about Arran Eco Savvy, which is a local organisation. At the time, they were looking for a Shop Manager for their charity shop pre loved goods shop.
[00:01:45] Ruth: I applied for that job. I didn't get it, but then I subsequently applied for another job that they had advertised. And I've worked for Eco Savvy for almost five years now,
[00:01:54] Ruth: working across several different projects.
[00:01:56] Ruth: So yeah, I feel really lucky to have been involved to such a degree within the community and within such an impactful organisation within a community that is interested in climate change matters.
[00:02:07] Madeleine: So what's the biggest challenge that your community group or you had to overcome in taking action, and what do you think you learned from it?
[00:02:16] Ruth: I would say that the biggest challenge, just in general with both the community and the issue of climate change in general.
[00:02:25] Ruth: It's just such an overwhelming topic. It's something that affects all parts of life. You know, it's not just about, you know, the environment and you can be an environmental activist. It also connects with people's lives in terms of
[00:02:38] Ruth: the economy and their finances. You know, social issues and social justice. You know, lots of local issues, land use. You know, it really is, it really does connect with so many other issues that it's not just about, you know, climate change or the environment.
[00:02:54] Ruth: And I think that that's really the crux of the issue with the kind of slowness of change. In that, on these higher levels is that it's just people become so overwhelmed with talking about it. And it can be quite a negative thing also, you know, it's quite scary.
[00:03:07] Ruth: And that's not always easy conversations to have with folk.
[00:03:10] Ruth: And it's also not an easy thing for people to kinda think about.
[00:03:13] Ruth: And that's why at Eco Savvy, I think we kind of try to focus a lot of the time on the small things that people can do.
[00:03:20] Ruth: But also acknowledging that it's not just about individual change, it's about the wider community level changes, but also government levels and just acknowledging that it's something that intersects in all parts of everybody's life.
[00:03:32] Madeleine: What's something that you're most proud of?
[00:03:35] Ruth: I'm really proud of the work that the organisation does in terms of just seeing the everyday impacts that it has.
[00:03:42] Ruth: So for example, we were at an event at the high school in Arran a few weekends ago. And
[00:03:48] Ruth: we had our e-bike trials going on so people could come along and try an e-bike which are always super popular.
[00:03:53] Ruth: But we also had some kiddies bikes that have been donated. So, somebody wasn't using these bikes anymore, just handed them into us. And the mechanics had done them up and made sure they were roadworthy.
[00:04:04] Ruth: And then this wee girl came along and she couldn't ride a bike, but she really wanted to be able to ride a bike.
[00:04:09] Ruth: So our e-bike guy just spent 10 minutes with her and showed her how to ride a bike and then she could ride a bike. She was allowed to just take that bike home. So, you know, things like that on a community level that can have such a big impact for those individuals. And then a long lasting, you know, who knows what she might do, you know, once she's learned to ride a bike, that could make such a big change for her.
[00:04:30] Ruth: So these kinds of things, and it's the same with the food work that we do and the little pop-up cafes that we have. And within the shop, whenever you go in the shop, there's people coming in for a chat. People coming in to try eco products, to donate stuff because they don't wanna see these things wasted.
[00:04:44] Ruth: So really, yeah, I think the thing I'm proudest about the most is really kind of integrating into the community and the work that's been done there.
[00:04:50] Madeleine: Who or what inspires you?
[00:04:53] Ruth: So I think climate activists really, really inspire me. Nobody wants to be doing that stuff. You know, nobody wants to be taping themselves to bridges and gluing themselves to roads and things like that. Particularly the youth activists really, really inspire me because I just feel like, why should they have to think about these things?
[00:05:13] Ruth: It's so unfair, you know? It makes me quite bitter that they're having to think about these things, and not just think about these things but having to spend their time, you know, acting on these issues that shouldn't be a problem for them.
[00:05:25] Ruth: But having said that, it's so inspiring that they care so much and that they're really the ones leading the charge to kind of address the climate emergency. And yeah, I find that super inspiring.
[00:05:38] Madeleine: What do you think is the most powerful thing that the Arran community can do right now to help create a better and fairer future for all?
[00:05:47] Ruth: I would say coming together, the Arran community does generally come together really well, but coming together and just kind of doing more of what they're doing already, you know, and acknowledging that small actions can have a big, big impact. So, you know,
[00:06:02] Ruth: there's the stuff that we're doing with Eco Savvy with active travel and sustainable food, but it's kind of, people can do whatever they're good at. So if you're good at gardening, go along to your community garden and volunteer there.
[00:06:16] Ruth: You know, if you're passionate about the sea, there's an amazing marine conservation organisation here, so you can get involved with beach cleans or volunteer at the Visitor Centre at Coast.
[00:06:26] Ruth: You know, there's really so much on Arran that folk can do, and I think that people on Arran have a really special relationship with the place and the land and the landscape,
[00:06:37] Ruth: being an island that we are. Because we have all these issues with the ferries and things like that. But also it is a very amazing geographical place to be because you're on an island.
[00:06:47] Ruth: And when the weather's bad, you feel the weather and you feel the impact of the seasons. And you notice your environment a lot more than you perhaps might if you were living in the city. And I think that people in Arran are very aware of that and really passionate about preserving that and taking care of the environment and taking care of Arran and all these things. And I think that's really powerful.
[00:07:07] Madeleine: When I say Green Islands Net Zero. What's the first thing that pops into your mind?
[00:07:13] Ruth: Well, we have a Green Islands Net Zero project.
[00:07:16] Ruth: It has lots of levels to it. So on the biggest level, it aims to map
[00:07:20] Ruth: emissions of Arran to get an understanding of where our emissions can be improved.
[00:07:26] Ruth: And then on a
[00:07:27] Ruth: smaller level than that, it's also about making people's homes more efficient so that they are warmer and their bills are less. Especially during this cost of living crisis, I think everybody's certainly feeling the pain and the pressure of increased energy bills. So, I get that net zero can be a bit of a jargon term for folk and can be a bit off-putting.
[00:07:49] Ruth: But really on a basic level, it's about reducing waste and trying to make things more efficient so that yes, it's good for the environment, but it's also good for your pocket and that you save money in the process.
[00:08:03] Madeleine: What do you think is the most useful resource in terms of community climate action that you would point people to?
[00:08:10] Ruth: I'm gonna kinda cheat and say two. I think the best resource that you can have is having conversations with folk and learning about what's happening, having conversations about your opinions and what people that your friends and family have heard and their thoughts. But also I'm a massive fan of the internet and doing your own research, being on social media, just kind of being aware of what's happening around the climate change movement.
[00:08:39] Ruth: Because, you know, the mainstream media does report on it, but I think that there's a lot to be learned from smaller news outlets and blog posts and community organisations that are on the ground who are trying to deal with the climate emergency.
[00:08:54] Ruth: Who might have a lot more kind of progressive opinions and ideas and also have had experience and successes that are relevant to you wherever you are.
[00:09:05] Madeleine: What is your most treasured possession?
[00:09:07] Ruth: Well, I wouldn't really say it's a possession? but my most treasured
[00:09:11] Ruth: things would be my memories. So I would say all my life, basically, I've taken lots of photos ever since I was very young. So I would say all my photos that were physical photos that I have in photo albums. But then also now, the ones that I have that are digital pictures. I must have tens of thousands of them stored. So yeah, they would definitely be my most treasured possession.
[00:09:33] Madeleine: So if you could imagine Arran 10 or 30 years from now and imagine that we've all done everything possible to limit the effects of climate change and now Arran is a fairer and better place to be. Could you close your eyes and share one memory from that future with us?
[00:09:52] Ruth: The dream for Arran would be the community all living peacefully and happily together. But having much better local processes. So you know, we're able to grow our own food here. We're able to produce all the food that we need, or the majority of the food that we need here. Amazing transport systems where you don't need to have a car. Better off-road systems where the possibility of cycle lanes to link up villages. Just being much more resilient as well. And being able to function much more as a community with all the resources that we need as much as possible on our island.
[00:10:32] Ruth: I think that would be pretty ideal. And preserving the natural beauty of the island and keeping the air clean and the beaches litter free and plastic free.
[00:10:42] Ruth: All these fantastic things that we will have in 10 years time.
[00:10:47] Madeleine: Thank you for speaking to me about Arran Eco Savvy and also your own climate journey.
[00:10:51] Ruth: Thank you for having me.
[00:10:53] Madeleine: Check out Arran Eco Savvy's website to learn more about their different projects and the great work they're doing to create a planet friendly future for their island home. They've just published some short videos about their Zero Waste Cafe, Active Travel Hub and Community Shop, which are worth a look. The links for these are in the show notes.
[00:11:14] Madeleine: This is a little teaser for the upcoming Arran audio tour that we are hoping to put together as part of Everyday Changemakers. We will be recording some more interviews with other people from Arran Eco Savvy soon, so watch this space for more.