News and Events

The Carnegie UK Trust is a key partner in this year’s Carnegie Festival, being held in Scotland from 21 August - 6 September. It has an eclectic programme, covering politics, film, innovation and enterprise that is designed to entertain, inform, inspire and challenge.

The festival of politics will be looking at issues including power, who has it and how to get it, ‘the special relationship' between the UK and the USA, and the new politics of giving. It draws to a close with the exploration of the colourful political career of George Galloway in an interview by BBC Economics Editor, Evan Davis.

Carnegie UK Trust has championed Community Land Trusts as an effective mechanism for the provision of affordable housing in rural areas. This support has been achieved through funding pilot schemes through the National CLT Demonstration Project.

We are delighted therefore that the Matthew Taylor Review of Rural Economy and Affordable Housing, commissioned by Gordon Brown and published on the 23 July contains the following recommendation:

Recommendation 20:
The Government should anticipate increased interest in Community Land Trusts (CLTs) as a model for affordable housing delivery and draw up guidance on how best to implement the model following the recent review of the CLT pilots, in particular addressing the need for a clear definition of what CLTs are, and broad rules on how they operate, without removing the structural flexibility that they currently enjoy which allows specific arrangements to be responsive to the needs of particular areas.

An influential coalition led by the Carnegie UK Trust has criticised the Empowerment White Paper, published this week (9 July 2008), for ignoring the power of community action. Carnegie, along with four partner organisations, believes that community action is fundamental to empowerment, but that the Government’s White Paper focuses too much on devolving power to individual citizens, bypassing the potential strengths of community groups.

Carnegie joined forces with the National Association of Local Councils (NALC); Urban Forum; Action for Market Towns (AMT) and Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE) to urge Government to back ‘Community Led Planning’. Community Led Planning is about local people and community groups coming together to develop a plan for the future of an area, to tackle local problems and influence local services. The group made a detailed submission to the Empowerment White Paper consultation, setting out the case for Community Led Planning. They argue that:

Carnegie UK Trust was pleased to sponsor the ‘Realising Rural Assets Conference’ on 19th June at the Royal Welsh Showground, Builth Wells. The event, organised by WCVO welcomed Elin Jones, Rural Affairs Minister and Leighton Andrews, Deputy Minister for Regeneration as guest speakers. Mr Andrews said that the Welsh Assembly Government was taking up the Carnegie challenge about the role of asset building and that community ownership of public buildings can have a positive effect in rural communities. He announced that he was looking to establish a community asset fund to allow communities to take over public buildings.

The Deputy Minister said:

4 July: An online poll was launched today which will give young people across Scotland the chance to determine which global issue Scotland should take action on.  The poll is an advanced part of the process for a Youth Politics event at this year’s Festival of Politics and will lead to guaranteed action at the Scottish Parliament based on the outcomes of the event. 

The entire process is youth-led, beginning with young people involved at the CIVICUS Youth Assembly in mid-June, taking in the online poll and eventually finalised at the one-day event taking place on Saturday 23rd August. 

The poll is hosted at www.syp.org.uk, www.sccyp.org.uk and www.youngscot.org with all results combined to give the Youth Politics Festival its shortlist of 4 topics.  The poll will be live from 4 - 14 July.  

The Youth Politics Festival: Think Global; Speak Local (Saturday 23 August 10:30-16:00) will be a dual-campus event, hosted concurrently in Carnegie College in Dunfermline and in the Scottish Parliament, joined together by video-link technology.  To register an interest in attending the event, young people should contact info@carnegiefestival.com. 

The poll and the event are strongly supported by the Scottish Parliament’s Presiding Officer, Alex Fergusson MSP.  Speaking on Friday as the poll went live, the Presiding Officer said: “This is an exciting opportunity for young people to put the issues that matter to them to the top of the political agenda. Festivals are about new ideas and new experiences and I would encourage as many young people as possible to log on and join in the debate.” 

The second in the joint seminar series held by NCVO and the Carnegie Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society is now open for bookings.

This seminar on 'Social capital and dimensions of equality' will look at the relevance and limitations of the social capital concept around issues of equality and diversity.

Chair: Tim Joss (Rayne Foundation) 

Speaker: Sughra Ahmed (Islamic Foundation)

2008 sees the last in a series of networking events for our Big Lottery co-funded RARP partners. Over the last few months each theme group has met to exchange ideas and progress and also to examine closely the aim of the RARP - to influence policy and practice.

The hill farming group in Cumbria hosted the remote and peripheral partners in March. The theme of this meeting was ‘Finding your way in the Fells: cultural landscape guiding communities communicating about their assets.’ The hill farming group used this meeting to gather thoughts from the other partners, the Celtic Neighbours project and the Eden Foundation on the sustainability of hill farming. An informal dinner was organised with local hill farmers from the Borrowdale valley to encourage a general discussion and then our RARP partners were given the opportunity to visit the farms and conduct more in depth interviews with the farmers themselves. Many interesting issues were raised and some suggestions put forward by the group. The main issue raised and tackled was how to retain young people in this type of farming in the face of increasing challenges. This RARP work continues until 2009 and the feedback from this visit will be fed into the research gathered.

We were back in Cumbria again in April with our Service Provision group in a gathering hosted by Cybermoor Ltd in Alston. Cybermoor, who are near completion of their action research work, presented their preliminary findings to the group. This action research has examined the ways in which rural community members and public sector service providers can be encouraged to contribute content to community websites. It has also explored opportunities for public sector agencies to use community websites as a means of engagement and assessment of rural needs and to influence delivery. The final report will be published here in due course. The group were also given the opportunity to visit some of the other Alston Moor social enterprises delivering community led service provision including the Mines Heritage Centre and community shop in Nenthead. The final part of the gathering saw the group work in depth with the Carnegie Commission Petal model and the address the issue of policy influence and shared messages.

read more