More than sixty local people braved rain, sleet and snow to attend the North Edinburgh Community Conference on Saturday. The Conference agreed that doing nothing is not an option and established Action Groups to address the challenges facing our community.
There’s no doubt North Edinburgh’s facing some tough challenges. Stubbornly high unemployment figures, shocking health statistics and more cuts to local services make for a cocktail of gloom and despondency. And yet there are opportunities too – the Community Empowerment Bill could open new doors, and North Edinburgh already has some great assets: our voluntary sector projects, our schools and our activists and volunteers who make this such a special community.
And that was the theme of Saturday’s conference, jointly organised by Community Action North and Granton Improvement Society and supported by Craigroyston Community High School’s Community Centre: what can WE do?
Facilitated by Edinburgh University’s Professor Oliver Escobar the morning session was dedicated to getting to the nub of the issue: what matters most to the people of North Edinburgh? Two workshop sessions enabled delegates to first agree the main issues, and then to break them down further to discuss these in finer detail.
The main themes identified by the conference were grouped under five general headings: Economy, power & decision-making; Crime & community safety; Housing; Young People; Community Spaces & Infrastructure.
We had the issues, now … the difficult bit – solutions and a plan. After lunch, delegates broke into groups to discuss the five topics and to come up with practical things the community can do to address these. The session was a success – fledgling Action Groups were formed and will reconvene with CAN support over the coming weeks.
As was pointed out repeatedly at the conference, this is simply the first step – the first part of what may be a long process. We will not solve ingrained social problems overnight – but together as a community we can make a start.
We collected a wealth of ideas and information on Saturday and a full conference report will be produced as soon as possible. In the meantime visit the CAN Community Action North Facebook Page for some images of the day – if a picture paints a thousand words our conference report could just rival War & Peace!
Thank you to all who attended, coming up with some great ideas and contributing so enthusiastically throughout. Thanks to Oliver and the organisers too – early indications are that conference evaluations have been very positive.
And if you couldn’t attend this time round, don’t worry – there will be lots of opportunities to get involved along the way. After all, it’s YOUR community!
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