Dumfries’ innovative community wealth building in spotlight
The work taking place in Midsteeple Quarter to power regeneration from its grassroots features in a new guide highlighting how community wealth building will become an increasingly influential component of creating a fairer, stronger and more sustainable Scottish economy.
The Economic Development Association Scotland (EDAS) has released a new guide, Implementing Community Wealth Building. MSQ features in the community ownership section, stating: "Like many towns throughout Scotland, Dumfries town centre has its fair share of empty and poorly-maintained buildings. But the local community is doing something about it."
The guide explains the ethos behind the community wealth building vision and how it can be rolled out – from developing more local and social enterprises to embedding fair work and ensuring investments deliver true benefits for local people.
And it’s certainly to be hoped that the work that continues to take place in Dumfries can help inspire other communities.
You can read the full report here (with the Midsteeple Quarter case study starting on page 25)
Community wealth building is an internationally recognised model of economic development designed to tackle long-standing systemic challenges facing local, regional and national economies by considering the ways in which wealth is generated, circulated and distributed.
Through deliberate and practical action, it seeks to direct and retain more wealth in communities by creating new fair work opportunities, helping local businesses and inclusive business models to expand and placing more assets in the hands of communities, ensuring that collective wealth works better for people, place and planet.
EDAS Chair Liz McEntee said: “Community wealth building is about cementing and augmenting existing practice and challenging ourselves to do things differently to deliver a functional wellbeing economy across our regions and local areas.
“This cannot be achieved through simply redistributing wealth, but must be hard-wired into everything we do – placing the wellbeing of current and future generations at heart of economic systems, balancing prosperity with the principles of equality, sustainability and resilience.
“We have heard from international experts on how this really can play a key part in improving local economies and delivering real good. It’s an exciting concept which we are keen to help organisations of all kinds embrace so that the good from it can grow.”
People, authorities and organisations are being encouraged to build work around five pillars to develop community wealth building:
Inclusive ownership (developing more local and social enterprises which generate community wealth, including social enterprises, employee owned firms and cooperatives).
Spending (maximising community benefits through procurement and commissioning – developing good enterprises, fair work and shorter supply chains)
Finance (ensuring that flows of investment and financial institutions work for local people, communities and business)
Workforce (increasing fair work and developing local labour markets that support the wellbeing of communities)
Land and property (growing the social, ecological, financial and economic value that local communities gain from land and property assets)
Midsteeple Quarter’s contribution towards positive place-making and community wealth building was highlighted in a recent report by a Scottish Parliament Committee. You can read more about that here.