It was twenty years this month that at IACD’s international conference in South Africa, the Board made the decision to move its headquarters from Belgium to Scotland. This was IACD’s third move, having originally been set up in the USA in 1953.
The decision to move the association to Scotland followed growing concerns at the time that the Belgium office was not providing effective support services for members and that membership as a result had fallen dramatically. The move to Edinburgh, Scotland finally took place in early 1998 flowing negotiations and the eventual appointment of a new Board.
IACD was based at the Scottish Community Education Council in Edinburgh (picture). In 2002 the office moved to the University of Dundee and in 2005 to Falkland, Fife. In 2016 we moved to the Scottish Community Development Centre in Glasgow.
Since the move to Scotland the association has more than tripled in membership, in large part due to the hard work of our successive volunteer Board members, our paid staff and the generous support of the Scottish Government, Scottish Community Education Council and Carnegie Trust.
Next year we celebrate an even older anniversary, that of our 65th birthday. We very much hope that all members will be able to celebrate that with us by coming to the World Community Development conference in 2018 in Ireland. See Events page for more details. We shall be sending out further information on that in the coming months. But for now a big thank you to our Scottish members and supporters for playing such an important role in re-establishing IACD as the worldwide voice for community development.
