This month sees the end of our six year partnership with Carnegie UK. This began in 2005 when the Trust invited IACD President Gary Craig to join its Commission on Rural Community Development and awarded IACD the first of six annual grants as its international action research partner. This grant, which eventually amounted to over £200,000 also enabled IACD to appoint its first Development Office Tara O’Leary and to transfer our office from the University of Dundee to Falkland.
The Carnegie Commission and Action Research Programme was the initiative of Carnegie Chief Executive Charlie McConnell, Past IACD Secretary General and was led by the Programme Director Kate Braithwaite.
The Carnegie Commission undertook one of the most comprehensive consultations on the challenges and opportunities facing local rural communities, primarily across the UK and Ireland in recent years, but through the partnership with IACD was able to also look at what was going on internationally. The Commission and the related Action Research programme which involved over sixty local CD projects, looked ahead, to understand what might happen to rural areas using ‘futures’ scenario planning, Amongst the outputs of the Commission were its Charter and Manifesto for Rural Communities’ and a Handbook called Exploring Community Resilience.
Exploring Community Resilience gathered together a mix of experience and academic insight into how local communities are learning how to cope – and even thrive – through difficult times, highlighting experience from Cumbria to the Scottish Highlands, and from New Orleans to Tooting, London. It was produced by a network of community activists (including many IACD members). The network is still run by its members to enable learning on topics relevant to building more resilient, vibrant communities.
The final Carnegie/IACD report called appreciating Assets was co-written by Tara O’leary, Ingrid Burkett and Kate Braithwaite.
Across different fields, from regeneration and community development to health, a new language of ‘assets’ is helping practitioners find new ways of tackling old issues. The report looked at the opportunities and challenges of transferring tangible assets such as land and buildings to community control. Carnegie’s Manifesto for Rural Communities advocated that ‘assets’ took inspiration from international best practice such as that championed by the Coady Institute in Nova Scotia.
Our partnership with Carnegie has proved to be influential in terms of community development policy and practice. We are enormously appreciative of the funding we received from the Trust, but also that our relationship has throughout been one of partnership.
Carnegie UK Trust is one of over twenty foundations established by Scottish-American steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. https://www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk
