STBF is a group of forums across Scotland which aims to organise and deliver events which will raise the profile of traditional building skills and materials across all sections of population.

The origins of BEFS, or Built Environment Forum Scotland, represent an interesting and important moment in the evolution of what might be called ‘place-care’. That is a clumsy phrase, I know, that not many might really want to use, but it carries few of the associations that have only too frequently handcuffed our sector. Terms like ‘historic’, ‘built’ and ‘environment’, or the portmanteau-like combinations that we construct to echo our own more personal predilections, such as ‘historic environment’ and ‘built environment’, too easily may be more about defining the territory we want to occupy than resolving the issues we want to address.

Similarly, awareness of any prospective disjunction between formal title – built environment – and actual locus (everywhere, and when) was hugely important at the founding of an organisation like BEFS precisely because inclusion had to lie at its heart: many of the people helping to shape our places would not even recognise the BEFS agenda, never mind realise their relevance to its objects. The remit of the new link body of BEFS would have to encompass everyone’s place of work, play and rest, as well as the places they had yet to inhabit, or even experience. So, in naming BEFS, it was crucial not to alienate those players that its own members already found so difficult to engage with, crucial because BEFS was to be the most important mechanism its members could access to secure that wider engagement and, for many, the only one.

In summary, the naming of ‘Built Environment Forum Scotland’ was a challenge for all those involved, especially for those officers, such as myself, who were trying to capture the wide scope that the new organisation would need to encompass to deliver on its ambitions. We faced then the same critical question we recognise today: might the titular reference to the ‘Built Environment’ lead to the exclusion of those that did not necessarily see themselves as sitting within its broad tent, and so lead more to exclusion than inclusion.

Significantly, perhaps, at the time of the naming of BEFS, the decision to identify first with that which had been ‘built’ – rather than, for example, that which might be ‘historic’ – was made in part at least with our own historic circumstances in mind. A potential host organisation for our interests – Scottish Environment & Amenity Link or SEAL – existed before BEFS was formally established, though it focused largely on the natural environment. SEAL also then served as a network for some key historic environment interests, though its agenda inevitably was shaped by management strategies that reflected natural environment priorities.

After SEAL re-named itself as LINK, the organisation published a report in 2002 on the historic environment which centred on archaeological issues. That work galvanised an already burgeoning awareness of the need for a more holistic, cross-sector approach to place-related issues centred around cultural, amenity, urban and related considerations, including not least those of enhancement and improvement.  It soon became clear that the member interests of the ‘body to be known as BEFS’ could not be effectively served if operated simply as a kind of cultural thread within an equivalent body for the natural environment, like LINK. So the explicit reference to ‘built’ environment in the new body of BEFS might have indicated – consciously or otherwise – an easy but formal distinction from the ‘natural’ environment link body.

The other thread in this background to the titling of BEFS arose when BEFS’ earliest promoters made the case to secure core-funding from the then national heritage agency, Historic Scotland. We focussed on a simple but challenging approach: that having a title framing the ‘built’ environment would help ensure the most inclusive relevance to ‘place-care’ interests – including development and construction sectors.  These interests could then be more easily encompassed within Historic Scotland’s heritage agenda ‘without prejudice’ to wider objectives, and the heritage agenda discreetly subsumed with the kind of all-embracing remit needed to maximise both value for money, by funders, and success, for the sector.

Fortunately, Historic Scotland soon recognised that its own aims could be best achieved by supporting BEFS as a third party interest that explicitly focussed its operations far beyond any core departmental heritage remit. In adopting this strategy, Historic Scotland also undertook what some have seen as its most innovative conservation strategy to date.  It acted on a core truth that many parts of our sector still struggle with: the historic environment was not a ‘thing’ as such, any more than the built environment was a ‘thing’. Rather ‘historic’ and ‘built’, in these terms and titles, only indicated single, reduced perspectives on the infinitely more complex phenomenon of ‘place’, a phenomenon to which anyone can, and should, bring their own perspectives and visions.

Historic Scotland saw BEFS as a body that could respond to places that exist within a collective experience, not alternatively as cultural or natural, built or historic, perspectives that those who name them naturally take as their default. Those terms captured nothing more than more individual approaches, and any thought that the adoption of such terms conferred superior rights or authority on the ‘namer’ would miss the point: a body like BEFS had to engage directly with everyone involved in places, doing all it could to operate in support of others getting the right outcome for all.

So, through funding BEFS, Historic Scotland demonstrated its understanding that the best way to look after its own sectoral ‘historic environment’ perspective on an entity as complex as ‘place’ was to make sure that all of the perspectives on that place – social, residential, environmental, commercial, financial – would be encompassed, informed, shaped and even on occasion led within a wide, ‘place-care’ agenda. This strategy was shrewd, targeted and cost-effective all in one!

Historic Scotland could see that BEFS would engage most by valuing and understanding the breadth of interests and perspectives involved. It would achieve most by making sure that those same interests and perspectives were fully informed and engaged with all the matters relevant to their roles, including of course any heritage values.  And it would deliver most, for all of its members, by ensuring that those heritage values were properly embedded and proportionately represented across all the processes involved in shaping places.

BEFS’ earliest founders also reflected the full diversity of lead interests required to respond to this broad agenda, across heritage (such as AHSS and SCT); planning (RTPI) and development (RIAS), and the same breadth of interests that shape best practice in ‘place-care’ generally. That cross-disciplinary spectrum of ‘place-care’ interests also came to be represented in the IHBC’s model for conservation skills and processes, our Conservation Cycle (Chart 3), as both BEFS’ members and IHBC conservation embed heritage values as a constructive consideration (evaluation) within process of managing changing places through planning (management) and development (intervention).  This model characterises conservation as an iterative process that can be applied as good practice in any ‘place-care’ operation – conservation-driven or otherwise, though most memorably it aligns with World Bank environmental management processes – while capturing also the headline specialist practice areas represented by the originators of BEFS.

For BEFS today, as members continue to grow and learn from the lessons BEFS offers and the experiences it generates, the object must be to maintain the widest purview relevant to the core interests of BEFS’ members in ‘place-care’: challenging received ideas; batting back the urge to tick the proffered box, and leaping into the many spaces between BEFS’ own members so that it can bridge and span their work most effectively, and for all our benefit.

In those early meetings with Historic Scotland a key message was that investing in heritage care and advocacy through a conduit structured like BEFS would be not only uniquely appropriate but, to Scotland’s great and global credit, nothing less than visionary. BEFS today is no less unique, appropriate or visionary as, with a universality of membership underpinned by its holistic understanding of how, why and when places change, BEFS’ combination of embedded heritage awareness and structurally inclusive representation continues to capture the essence of what is needed for effective ‘place-care’.

I look forward to seeing more of that vision in action, in BEFS, in Scotland and, hopefully, beyond.

No pressure then Euan!

Currently there are just under 130 groups in Scotland affiliated to the Scottish Civic Trust.   Some are called civic trusts, others amenity societies or ‘friends of’ or heritage groups.  Their aims vary but most share a common purpose which is to care for, celebrate and champion their local village, town or city. Some have websites. Some don’t.  A few even have Twitter and Facebook accounts.  Many spend a lot of time commenting on planning applications and are battle-scarred from years of fighting inappropriate developments or loss and neglect of heritage assets.   A lot of the groups run programmes of talks and some of them publish heritage leaflets and magazines.

Most members of these societies tend to be older and, indeed, many are retired.  They offer lifetimes of experience and come from a wide range of backgrounds, some professional, some not.   They are, perhaps, not as representative of their larger communities as they would like to be.   Almost all struggle with the same issues – ageing membership, lack of voice, recruitment of new, younger members and a feeling of swimming against the tide.  With limited success and much frustration they make a stand against waves of inappropriate and ill-conceived development and gradual piecemeal erosion of what makes certain places special.

What drives them on is civic pride – pride in their area, responsibility for its upkeep and future and a determination to stand up for it when it is under threat.   Some might call them curmudgeonly while others will respect them for the voluntary work they do in promoting local heritage and encouraging better placemaking.  Their sense of civic duty harks back to an earlier time – the 1960s and ‘70s when civic society in the UK was at its most active.  Then, in response to the widespread destruction of much of the country’s historic fabric, delivered with fervour by modernist zealots from the architectural and planning professions, the Scottish Civic Trust was founded, followed by scores of civic and amenity societies across the country.  In a time when people lived in neighourhoods for much longer than today’s transient populations, sometimes a lifetime, there was a greater connectivity to one’s environment.  This cohesion, along with a campaigning spirit, imbued groups to challenge decisions made by planning authorities and city and town leaders and helped to grow the conservation movement as we know it today.

The challenge for these groups now is how to be relevant and effective in today’s fast moving world of multiple distractions, 24 hours news coverage, and the shifting sands of modern society.  They can sometimes appear analogue in a digital age but it is encouraging to see some of our groups engage with social media, recognising that having ‘followers’ might be as important as more members.

It would be easy to claim that the biggest threat to the future of civic society in the 21^st century is apathy but I don’t buy this.   People are interested in their built environment, local history and heritage.  If not, why else would over 70,000 people visit Doors Open Days buildings every September or how can Facebook sites such as ‘Lost Edinburgh’ have almost 136,000 followers?  Of course, it is far easier to click a ‘Like’ icon on a Facebook page than join a group, become a volunteer or comment on a planning application.   Perhaps the mind-set within local authorities needs to change to better reflect the concerns and aspirations of the public.   In the Scottish Civic Trust’s recent six-point action plan, produced in the run up to last May’s Scottish Parliament elections,  we argued for a strengthening of the role of communities in major planning applications, particularly at the pre-application stage as well as endorsement of the new Place Standard tool, applicable to new housing developments and existing neighbourhoods.   This resource, along with the Community Empowerment bill and the recent Review of the Scottish Planning System must lead to more people getting proactively involved in decisions affecting their local places and spaces.  If they don’t they will have failed.

So what is the future of civic pride in 21^st century Scotland?  I don’t believe there is a crisis yet but as Cliff Hague pointed out in the recent Scottish Civic Trust Annual Lecture, Civic Pride, Civic Identity, Civic Trust, “civic pride is most likely to be constructed when there is a strong sense of shared civic identity, enriched by stories that are told be governments that are civic champions”.   In other words, it is not good enough for our local heroes, civic champions and heritage angels to be drawn just from communities; our elected representatives, council leaders and officers need to demonstrate they too are committed to enhancing and celebrating Scotland cities, towns and villages and to putting civic responsibility before politics and profit.

John Pelan, Director, Scottish Civic Trust
21 June 2016

“Could you write a blog for us William?” “Yes”, I said. Then the realisation hit me, I’ve written blogs which have been kindly published on the Beith Trust website/social media.  However, this is different, the Built Environment Forum Scotland, that’s scary knowing that a wider audience will be reading and commenting on not only this blog but on the Beith Trust, so here goes.

Beith has a population of just under 7,000 and is situated on the border between North Ayrshire and Renfrew.  A town once famous for high quality cabinet makers, from 1745-1757 the Parish Minister was one John Witerspoon. Witerspoon was the only clergyman to sign the American Declaration of Independence on the 4^th of July 1776. And being the birthplace of Dr Henry Faulds, the first person to publish a detailed report on ‘the conception of fingerprints in criminal investigation’, in the scientific journal Nature in 1880, as well as founding the Tsukiji hospital in Tokyo in 1875.

Today, let’s be honest, you might see Beith or other towns in North Ayrshire on the TV weather map and wonder who or what they are. These hamlets, villages and towns in North Ayrshire and other areas are often overlooked, seen simply as a feeder or commuter towns; you live in these places but work and spend your money outside, never connecting/engaging or being an active participant in the community.

How, dear reader, do I know so much? Well, I grew up in North Ayrshire, went to school here, so have and continue to see the affects the aforementioned has/is having across the region.

Established in 2010, the Beith Community Development Trust (BCDT) has evolved into a community/social hub. In the beginning it was a combination of parents, young people and children who wished to take over the running of the local Astroturf pitch from the local council, which was achieved in 2012. The evolution from simply a sports group to community hub at the Beith Astro has taken a mixture of time, money, resources, good will and continued dedication. At the Astro today you have a soup group, a community garden, play scheme, street meet, employability sessions and opportunities for those eligible to undertake Duke of Edinburgh, to name but a few groups/classes.

From 2012 until November last year the Astro was the one and only base/Headquarter. However, in November of 2015 after 18 months the Trust was given the keys to the old Geilsland School. Geilsland, the former school given approval by the Scottish Education Department for building in 1963, for years lay empty, worse the longer the campus was left the more it became disconnected physically and in the minds of the community.

Sounds very negative doesn’t it; not exactly filling you with confidence about the future. Well, fear not, as our journey continues. Showing essentially a new campus for the 21^st century with connections to the past, the campus is currently undergoing its largest major refit, including remodelling and re-positioning. It’s the belief of the Beith Trust that that campus can/should become the ‘gateway to North Ayrshire’, an asset along with others in the region to entice residents and visitors to stop, reflect, linger, spending time and money locally on local produce, goods, recreation and amenities, reversing the Garnock Valley’s decline over the past thirty years.

Furthermore, the campus will continue to support the delivery of a range of opportunities, activities and initiatives, giving individuals the tools to enable themselves to learn, and develop as active, informed contributors within the community. This creates a circle in which wealth is created and retained locally in monetary, social, environmental and cultural measurements.

I end this blog with this: for any regeneration to work and be sustainable you need community engagement. You can’t just assume it will happen, you need to tell the community what you are, what services you provide and for them to take a positive outlook/view on what you are trying to do. Yes, you can show them with an all singing all dancing website or brochure but the real test is when they or their kids come and won’t stop talking about how much of a great time they had; that’s how you measure success. This also involves engaging with the community when the town has something positive to shout/whoop about, such as Beith Juniors reaching and winning their first Scottish Junior cup final. Or working with local businesses to improve the appearance and condition of your main street as is the case with Beith Main Street, embracing the towns past while not being defined by it.

It also involves highlighting the positive assets of an area. For too long only the negatives have been highlighted. True, everywhere has its issues, but that’s never been the full story.

William Morton, Administrative Assistant at Beith Trust.

To understand a building’s history is to understand its soul. People, events, even memories, all lend significance to a building, making it more than the sum of its materials. It doesn’t matter the scale, that soul means something to someone. It can reflect anything from one family’s story to key moments in a nation’s history.

The host of that soul, the outward facing facade in which lives are lived, tells its own story. The vernacular design of our buildings should express the history of where they are found as much as the stories of the people who lived there. Granite or brick, tiled or slated, cottage or tenement, buildings of the past visually form a critical part of a place’s identity today. Buildings form a communities’ sense of place.

I see a problem though as more and more new development appears in the landscape. It no longer seems to matter where you are in the country; the setting of the landscape, the vernacular heritage into which something new is built, has become irrelevant. Local identities have been replaced instead with a generic architecture that rarely inspires, or tells that local story.

Of course developer profit drives much of this approach, along with perhaps an unknowing indifference from buyers. I understand this, market forces are king, but there are ways to embed community identity from the start. A way to give a new building a starter soul as it were.

The vast majority of archaeology today is undertaken commercially as a result of requirements placed on developers in the planning process. Too often the effect is to view archaeology as either a constraint or a form of pollution to be dealt with. However, if approached imaginatively, the results of archaeology can be used positively. Archaeology is no longer an issue to be resolved, but rather a key urban design tool for every architect to embrace.

If we think of the historic environment from the start of the design process, all sorts of possibilities present themselves. Consider how products of the archaeological mitigation process link with stages of the development process:

Archaeological Desk-based Assessment and the Site Plan

What was the landscape used for in the past? Are there specific shapes to the parcels of land which echo those uses? How can these be incorporated into the overall layout?

What are the key historic landscape features that could be retained (buildings, field boundaries, routeways, local names etc.)?

What are the traditional materials used in the region? What are the traditional building shapes? Is there a particular architectural detail that can be reflected in the new building designs?

Did anything of historical interest happen on the site, whether it be local or of national importance? What traditional stories does the community know about the site? Could these events be used to inspire art or other public realm elements?

Archaeological Excavation and the Public Realm

What was found? Could it be used to inspire shapes or art within the development (pavement art, plant beds or allotments reflecting the footprint of buildings found on the site, artefacts that could be accessibly displayed etc.)? 

Are any of the discovered remains worthy of being kept? Could they be included in the greenspace? If so then what types of interpretation could be introduced (traditional information boards, digital reconstructions, graffiti murals, 3D printed models etc.)? Could they contribute as assets for bringing visitors into the area?Could reconstructions be used for play areas or community facilities?

Which new streets or buildings could be named after particular things that have been found under or next to them? Can names be used to connect the new development with the area’s past?

Archaeological Publication and the Community

How can the technical archaeological reports be made more accessible to the public? Can it be made into an information pack that is provided as standard to every new householder? Could the information be used in local school projects?

Could a community walking trail be established guiding people to where things were found? Could a community timeline be produced, showing the depth of their history?

All of these ideas are just the tip of the proverbial design iceberg. Like an iceberg the true potential lies hidden out of site, only revealed if we go looking for it. We can never be entirely certain what archaeological remains will be found on any given development. What we do know though is that they, along with the wider historic environment, offer an opportunity to add personality to something new.

It helps embed development into the landscape, giving it a continuity with the local vernacular. It gives development an immediate soul which people can fall in love with. After all, if you only build to the design that everyone else is using, you will only build what everyone else is building. Instead look to archaeology for inspiration, and give communities a real sense of place once more.

A recent Tweet of Jane Jacobs’ words: ‘A sense of place is built up, in the end, from many little things, some so small people take them for granted, and yet the lack of them takes the flavor out of the city’ went viral[1]. She gave a simple message loaded with observation and experience, appreciative of the rich, layered and evolving character of place.  Ian Nairn voiced the same concern advising against ‘the annihilation of the site, the steamrollering of all individuality of place to one uniform and mediocre pattern’. [2] Jacobs was inspired by him and drew from his writings.

The trail-blazing guidance of these two great critics from the 1950s, Nairn (1930-83) and Jacobs (1916-2006), has informed and inspired policy for successful place-making and urban design over the subsequent decades.  However, their wise words have not yet won-over the ‘movers and shakers’ who re-develop our towns and cities, those who too often persuade our councils of their higher claim.   Re-familiarising ourselves with the key messages of Nairn and Jacobs’ forces a view on how far we have come – or how much we are standing still.  It also provides a CPD par excellence.

Nairn’s perceptive words have caused many to draw breath. The master historian Nikolaus Pevsner bowed to Nairn’s eye for place-making, stating ‘Mr Nairn has a greater sensibility to landscape and townscape than I have, and he writes better than I could ever hope to write.’[3] In June 1955, at just 24 years of age, Nairn awakened a civic conscience in a special edition of the Architectural Review, the polemical ‘Outrage’. For the purpose of positive guidance on how to remedy the errors, he succeeded this with ‘Counter Attack’ published in the same magazine in December 1956, offering antidotes to the problems identified.

The particular aspect which seized Nairn and which he urged should inform contemporary planning and design was that of local and regional distinctiveness, achieved with unselfconsciousness and surprise: he urged avoidance of bland anonymity and sameness, advising that ‘there is only one real rule, that each place has its own nature, its genius loci’.   Yet how many modern housing developments have we seen which lack any reference to their location.  He loathed artificial beautification as much as he rejected the repetitive.

Jacobs believed in people making cities, that is people using cities and the urban form as a response to what makes us congregate and circulate. In an article published in Fortune Magazine in 1958, ‘Downtown are for People’, she explained:

‘No one can find what will work for our cities by looking at the boulevards of Paris, as the City Beautiful people did; and they can’t find it by looking at suburban garden cities, manipulating scale models, or inventing dream cities.  You’ve got to get out and walk.

…the best way to plan for downtown is to see how people use it today; to look for its strengths and to exploit and reinforce them. There is no logic that can be superimposed on the city; people make it, and it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans.’[4]

Jacobs believed that variegated streets full of surprises were crucial to magnetic places.  They should ideally belong to a mix of periods.  The green agenda was not in currency in the fifties but still she saw the calibre and value of re-using much of the old. ‘Why is a good steak house usually in an old building?’ she asks, and invites us to:

‘Notice that when a new building goes up, the kind of ground-floor tenants it gets are usually the chain store and the chain restaurant. Lack of variety in age and overhead is an unavoidable defect in large new shopping centers and is one reason why even the most successful cannot incubate the unusual–a point overlooked by planners of downtown shopping-center projects.’[5]

Fifty years later, Jan Gehl repeated the truth of Jacobs findings.  Most of the architects of the new Copenhagen, he pointed out, live in the historic suburbs, not the new areas they have created.[6] In Cities for People (2010) he acknowledges his debt to her while providing new examples and guidance on successful urban place-making. He records that ‘Jane Jacobs was the first strong voice to call for a decisive shift in the way we build cities’.[7]

While the article ‘Downton is for People’ contains the essence of much of Jacobs findings, Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) provided more detail and developed her contribution.[8]

Not everyone has liked the passionate language with which Nairn and Jacobs conveyed the thinking – notably Tim Abrahams – but as ‘rhetoric with pound-signs’ is used by many of those re-designing our places, being armed with counter-intelligence is essential to make all players stop, think and analyse.[9] Balance is crucial, reasonableness and rationality require care. The informed and attention-grabbing analogies of Nairn’s writing or the hard truths voiced by Jacobs are both welcome. ‘Outrage’ and ‘Counter Attack’, ‘Downtown is for People’ and Death and Life of Great American Cities were, and remain, hugely influential. Matthias Wendt gives an update on Jacobs for the planning professionals:

‘Jacobs’ notions that planning practitioners should promote diversity in cities and be self-critical in achieving planning goals are highly relevant today. Death and Life is especially cherished by planning students and active planners. Jacobs provides hands-on examples and relates to common sense and everyday city life by using vivid language instead of writing in a code indecipherable by the average planning practitioner.’[10]

Rowan Moore, writing in The Guardian, has stressed that Nairn’s words are similarly as relevant as ever.[11] Sadly, he notes too that: ‘in wanting officialdom to feel as intensely about places as he did, Nairn was doomed to disappointment. But anyone who cares even slightly about their surroundings should be intensely grateful for his attempt.’

Nairn and Jacobs for CPD: Sample Sources

Nairn worked on around 30 films, notably Nairn’s North (1967) and Nairn’s Journeys (1978) and two TV series, Nairn at Large and Nairn’s Travels. A number of his programmes are currently available on BBC iPlayer, see www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=Nairn%20Across%20Britain&suggid=urn%3Abbc%3Aprogrammes%3Ap01q1km2.

In addition to the watershed editions of Architectural Review discussed above, key influential monographs by him are Nairn’s  London  (1966) and Nairn’s Paris (1968).  Gillian Darley and David McKie’s have provided a short celebration of his life and work Ian Nairn: words in place, 2013 which is a valuable digest of his achievements.

Jane Jacobs’s article ‘Downtown is for People’ published in Fortune Magazine, 1958 is available at http://fortune.com/2011/09/18/downtown-is-for-people-fortune-classic-1958/.  

Various pdfs of her publication, The Death and Life in Great American Cities, can be found in a search online for the title, which is available at a moderate price though several book suppliers over the internet.  

Online Biographies of both writers are available through the Wikipedia.  A further biography of Jane Jacobs is at http://www.biography.com/people/jane-jacobs-9351679

It’s not often that we planners get to see a plan being delivered on the ground – not, I hope, because they are undeliverable, but because it can take years for proposals to come to fruition.

So it was with great delight that I headed up to Crianlarich last week to the opening of their new community path network, at the kind of invitation of Strathfillan Community Development Trust, who have done much good work in Crianlarich and Tyndrum over the years.

The opening of the path network was a major landmark for the village. The proposal was included as a major initiative in the Community Action Plan that we prepared in 2011 (you can read more about that in my post from 2011).  That plan, like so many others, was borne out of a desire by the local community to establish its priorities for the future in the face of adversity – in this case a new bypass.

This small community of around 200 residents has done a magnificent job.  The path network is a wonderful resource for locals and visitors alike, and shows the best of what the village has to offer – wonderful views of the village, the strath and the mountains, and a delightful riverside path that’s a real gem.  With the new signposts and information panels in place, it’s a worthy stop whether you’ve got 5 minutes to stretch your legs or an hour for a longer walk.

Put this together with other community initiatives – particularly the lease of the old station yard from the local authority to create a picnic area in the heart of the village – and the effect is truly transformational.  As the chair of the Development Trust and local shopkeeper Isla Craig says, the transformation isn’t just physical: now that there are visible changes on the ground, more and more villagers are coming up to her and asking how they can get involved.  But it’s taken 5 years of hard work by Isla and a small number of similarly committed volunteers to reach that tipping point.

Similarly, when the Trust announced to the National Park and Council back in 2011 what they were going to do to improve their lot, without waiting for the public sector, that opened the door to funding and support.  Wouldn’t you prefer to support an active, positive community rather than one which complains and criticises?

Mind you, it’s not been an easy ride for the good folk of Crianlarich.  The £200k path network has taken 5 years of hard grind from Isla and her fellow volunteers. The paths would never have happened without the support of Forestry Commission Scotland and the Big Lottery Fund but, as Isla points out, it’s not an easy process.

Crianlarich is an inspiration for other communities who are thinking of putting the Community Empowerment Act into action.  Everybody involved should be justifiably proud of the transformation that they’re delivering in Crianlarich.  But remember – behind those smiling faces last Friday was a lot of hard volunteer work.  So, the more that ‘professionals’ like me and the public sector can ease that burden, the more smiling faces we’ll see in communities across Scotland.

Read more on Nick Wright’s blog.

I promised in my previous blog to report on the Summit Meeting on 21 April, when PAS, supported by Cupar Development Trust, presented the conclusions of the consultation process.  The slides and the artists’ impressions were welcomed both for their content and as ways of summarising the thoughts which had filled the Corn Exchange on those four days in March.  They are available on the CuparCould website.

There is a familiar management cry: What? So what? Now what?

Cupar has reached the third of these. Delivery is now the major challenge – the enthusiastic responses of local individuals and organisations, with constructive ideas, deserve a determined follow up, and early delivery of at least some of the ideas proposed.  All the usual constraints apply – time, energy and inevitably cash.

Concurrent Activity

It is helpful that Cupar is in the midst of a CARS/THI scheme, funded to a total of £1.5M.  The bulk of that is committed already to the County Buildings and the Burgh Chambers, with some available to help Fife Council upgrade a few of Cupar’s medieval closes network – as well as grants to individual owners towards the costs of vital repairs to the town centre’s older buildings, the first project being now complete.  The scheme provides also training in Traditional Skills.

A Planning application is about to be lodged for the former Burgh Chambers to become a Holiday Let, meaning there will be a management task for some organisation in the town. But the most visible work which is obvious to all is the painting of the street face of the County Buildings in St Catherine Street.  The pink and white “Raspberry Ripple” of the past forty years is being replaced by stone colours to recreate the original effect, when the stone would not have been painted at all.  The need for the work is evident from this photograph showing the colour menu.

Efforts Post Charrette – CuparCould to become “CuparCan“

While the final report is awaited, Cupar Development Trust is trying to keep the momentum going.  In particular, members of the Board are, firstly, liaising with PAS over the format of the final report so that it will form a springboard towards actual action, and, secondly, seeking approval from other organisations in the town for the creation of a co-ordinating  group to ensure concurrent and complementary activity.  Cupar does not need another formal organisation for this – the town is blessed with many excellent, dedicated, organisations which make huge contributions in their own areas of expertise, not least Cupar In Bloom which wins awards for Cupar at UK national level.  The response to the Charrette has to avoid burdening such groups with additional work, and of course Cupar Development Trust has neither the desire nor the authority to lay down how the response is to happen – but it has ideas which it hopes will be acceptable.

The folk of Cupar will have to be realistic about what can be done and how quickly.  Apart from projects which have already started under CARS/THI, there may not be a large number of physical outcomes to see this side of 2020 given the financial climate.  The reality is that the financial climate is not expected to get much better before 2020.  But the outcome was never to be just an exercise in urban design – and the Charrette has been a success in the softer areas of town improvement, bringing people together and achieving consensus on current realities and do-able improvements in the future.  It is important to identify actions that individuals and organisations recognise their role in.  Possibilities like upgrading Ferguson Square – as shown below – would combine a small amount of urban redesign with the softer side of encouraging activity and footfall.

Building on present strengths

During the Charrette, there was a strong buzz about the town, with accolades for Cupar as a place to bring up families – fine schools, many activities and good communications.  The downsides and opportunities commented on often reflected the content of the BEFS Small Town Report of 2014, such as lack of hotel, the river as an opportunity to be built on, and the need to identify what will make Cupar a stronger destination of choice.  It is already a hub for bus and train travel, and was described during the Charrette as the “creative commercial heart of North East Fife”. A clear challenge is to identify what a sustainable market town of the 21st century should look like, and then mould Cupar to that – both by softer aspects and by physical design.  Simple things like better sign-posting came up time and again during the discussions, and there was a particularly lively and purposeful discussion on business and commercial opportunities, which the town’s businesses association, ABCD, will no doubt be expanding on.  There is a grand base to build on, and it was gratifying to see six of Cupar’s indigenous small businesses winning awards at the Fife-wide Business Awards ceremony in April.  All six now go forward to the Scotland event.

Much has already been achieved towards creating easier pedestrian and cycle access.  Here is an imaginative depiction of the town’s routes, produced by Cupar Active Travel, which brought a lot of comment from visitors to the Charrette.  It covers more than just the town centre, on which the Charrette was focused.

Similarly, much good work has been done by Sustainable Cupar, not least re-opening the old drove road over the hill to Ceres – not a town centre project, obviously, but one which may encourage greater footfall in the centre as well as providing a pleasant expedition for the town’s families.  Cupar Heritage is investigating rejuvenating the town’s Heritage Trail.

I could go on.  There are so many organisations and initiatives in Cupar contributing to making it a fine place to live.  But it was clear from the Charrette discussions that so much more could be done, given adequate time, energy and cash.  Making a deliverable plan of the priorities is the next focus both for PAS, in their final report, and for Cupar Development Trust as it looks for ways to harness Cupar’s talent.

There will be a further blog on all this after the PAS report has been received.

Meantime, Cupar will be delighted if you follow progress via www.cuparcould.com, Twitter (@cuparcould), Instagram (@cuparcould) and Facebook (facebook.com/cuparcould). A montage of past and present concludes this blog.

Bill Pagan