Two fundraisers with sight loss are taking on a 14-mile sponsored walk in tartan, thisSunday, September 17th.
The Kiltwalk is an annual multi-city event allowing anyone to raise funds for the charities and causes they care about. Shona Black (58) and Daryl Stewart (21) will be embarking on the Edinburgh Kiltwalk to raise funds for RNIB. It’s a cause that’s so important to them and over 180,000 other people who have sight loss in Scotland, as well as their families and friends.
The pair are up for a challenge, however, as they are not only participating in the Edinburgh Kiltwalk, but they have already taken part in the previous three events taking place across the year, in Glasgow, Dundee, and Aberdeen.
Their year-long Kiltwalk journey finishes with a 14-mile grand finale in Scotland’s capital.
Both long-time volunteers, Shona has been severely sight impaired (blind) for most of her adult life, and Daryl is partially sighted.
Shona says: “We are especially looking forward to Edinburgh as it’s our last Kiltwalk of the year. We have our fingers crossed for good weather and some other members of the sight loss community will be joining us too.
“Afterwards Daryl and I have promised ourselves we are going for a well-earned drink or two!”
All funds raised by Shona and Daryl will go towards helping RNIB to offer practical and emotional support to blind and partially sighted people, their families and carers.
* You can support Shona and Daryl’s Kiltwalk here:
Get ready to dance the night away at Cineworld with Barbie in 4DX! For one week only you can immerse yourself in Barbie Land with this multisensory cinematic experience across 35 Cineworld locations in the UK and Ireland. Tickets are now on sale for the 4DX release date TODAY – Friday, Sep 15.
Barbie is a dazzling and empowering tale for all ages with its inspiring storyline, incredible fashion, and unforgettable characters. Now, thanks to Cineworld’s state-of-the-art 4DX technology, viewers can be transported into the enchanting world of Barbie in the most immersive way imaginable.
What is 4DX, you ask? It’s a cutting-edge, multisensory experience which feels like a cinematic roller coaster with moving seats and 20 stimulating effects. Think: Beach. With water effects.
Barbies and Kens can also expect:
Motion Seats: Feel the excitement as your seats twist, sway, heave, shake and vibrate in sync with the on-screen action, whether Barbie is riding her dream car or dancing the night away.
Environmental Effects: Engage your senses and experience the magic as bubbles, misty smoke, gentle breezes, even captivating scents seamlessly blend into the cinematic adventure.
Lighting Effects: Synchronized lighting that transforms the atmosphere of the movie, immersing you in a giant blowout party where dazzling lights will leave you positively electrified.
The phenomenal success of Barbenheimer (Barbie and Oppenheimer), both released on July 21, saw a record breaking week for Cineworld which had its ‘best week ever!’ welcoming over 1.7 million guests over a 7 day period, making it the busiest in the exhibitor’s history. Cineworld came out on top as the number 1 exhibitor in the UK overall in terms of box office market share.
Customers are advised to book their Barbie 4DX tickets in advance to avoid disappointment at cineworld.com/4DX or using the Cineworld app.
Casey Cohen, Head of Marketingat Cineworld said: “Barbie has been the buzzworthy blockbuster of the year, and we’re tickled pink to welcome all of those who want to embark on an electrifying 4DX adventure with Barbie and Ken.
“Get ready for a rollercoaster of sensations, where your seats sway and your senses sway with them, propelling you headfirst into Barbie’s whimsical world. Whether it’s your Barbie movie debut or a thrilling reunion, this exhilarating format will have you bouncing in your seat with delight. We promise, it will be the best day ever!”
POLICE are appealing for information following reports of an assault at the football pitches on Muirhouse Parkway during a Craigroyston Community Youth Football game on Sunday, 10 September, 2023.
Anyone who witnessed this incident is asked to contact 101 and ask to speak to Gayfield CID or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
British Council Scotland has announced the appointment of Peter Brown as its new Director. Peter will lead global education and arts programmes and will sustain and grow the British Council’s current network of relationships across Scotland.
He will support engagement around culture, education, and cultural relations with a network of over 100 international offices, taking the best of Scotland to the world and vice versa.
Peter will join the team in Edinburgh, moving from Serbia where he has been Director for the Western Balkans for the past three years.
In Belgrade, Peter led the British Council’s work across the Arts, English, and Education – most recently on the UK government funded 21st Century Schools programme, reaching 1 million 10-15 year old children in 4000 schools between 2019 and 2022.
Peter is excited to return home to Scotland and says about the new role: “I’m absolutely thrilled to join the team in Edinburgh and to head up the British Council in Scotland. I’ve been with the British Council for over 30 years and have worked around the world making global connections and building relationships with the UK. I’m looking forward to carrying on this work in, and for Scotland”.
“The British Council has brilliant and well-established arts and education programmes connecting across the country and I’m excited to help create more opportunities for Scottish creatives, students, and organisations to build worldwide connections.
“More broadly, I will look at how we help amplify the cultural assets of Scotland such as its leadership in creative showcasing and education partnerships.
“We’re working with the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities to offer the global EARTH Scholarship programme focused on creative approaches to the climate crisis.
Peter brings with him a wealth of international experience, having led policy and education work across the Western Balkans and has held Country Director roles in Mozambique, Venezuela, Uganda and Ethiopia.
Welcoming Peter into the Director role, Seona Reid, Chair of the British Council Scotland advisory committee, said:“We are delighted to welcome Peter into this important role. Peter has longstanding connections with Scotland and has a reputation for delivering work internationally and creating lasting value.
“I have no doubt he will make a very significant contribution to the internationalisation of education and arts in Scotland in the coming years, working alongside valued partners including the Scottish Government.”
Scotmid has announced the launch of an exciting new charity partnership with the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) and is rallying customers, members and colleagues to come together and ‘seas’ the opportunity to support their fundraising efforts.
Funds raised will enable the RNLI to purchase a new Atlantic 85 lifeboat, which will form part of the relief fleet and will be used by stations to assist in critical rescues during times when vessels are undergoing repairs or maintenance.
Jill Hepburn, Head of Region for the RNLI in Scotland, said:“We are very excited to be working with Scotmid, which has an incredible reputation for both fundraising and raising awareness for their charity partners.
“This partnership will reach into the very hearts of our communities and help us to raise awareness of water safety and the incredible work carried out by our dedicated volunteers.
“Over 90% of our rescues take place less than one mile from shore, meaning the Atlantic 85 is credited with saving countless lives each year. As part of our relief fleet, the Scotmid lifeboat will have a lifesaving impact on numerous communities in Scotland – a tribute fitting to such an outstanding organisation.”
The Atlantic 85 is one of the fastest in the RNLI’s fleet. The boat has the capacity to carry four crew members as well as core medical and rescue equipment. Critically, it has the space to transport several additional people, making it ideal for a range of open water incidents.
John Brodie, Chief Executive at Scotmid, said:“The alignment of the RNLI’s values with our own, which centre around serving our communities and enhancing lives, makes us perfect partners. As we eagerly embark on the year ahead, our colleagues are already ‘on board’ and enthusiastically charting out fundraising plans!”
Volunteer lifeboat crews provide a 24-hour rescue service, and seasonal lifeguards look after people on busy beaches. RNLI crews and lifeguards have saved over 142,700 lives since the charity launched in 1824, with lifeboats launching 9,312 times in 2022, saving 389 lives.
The RNLI has 238 lifeboat stations around the coasts of the UK and Ireland.
One of Scotland’s fastest-growing food brands has announced that reducing its carbon emissions by almost 110% helped the company to survive Brexit, Covid and especially the ongoing energy crisis.
We hae meat, which supplies major supermarket chains with high-quality sausages and burgers from its Ayrshire farm and factory, installed a biomass plant on site and solar panels. The investments helped to save £750,000 from its annual energy costs.
Alex Paton, fourth-generation farmer and co-founder of the business with his wife Carlyn, said: “Without doubt, we could have closed our doors in the last two years if we hadn’t made our operations much more sustainable.
“The increase in energy prices, on the back of Brexit and Covid, would have been impossible for us to absorb. We’ve seen other businesses in our sector struggling where we’ve been able to use the cost savings as a basis for growth.”
The company first created a carbon management plan in 2015 with support from environmental consultants Tomson Consultancy, reducing its emissions by nearly 90% within the first year alone. It has since gone on to install LEDs and a wastewater treatment system.
Further savings have come from switching its delivery fleet to hybrid plug-in vans charged by the company’s own CHP electric generation, saving 66% on fuel costs, and using excess heat from on-site heat generation to replace tumble dryers.
These have all resulted in the business now being carbon neutral.
The family business includes four traditional farms and even the cattle gain from a greener approach as waste cardboard is shredded for bedding.
Alex added: “Brexit has affected competition for labour and maybe an inflationary effect on materials, and clearly Covid was disruptive for virtually every business sector.
“The increase in energy prices could have been catastrophic. We started on our net zero journey eight years ago because it was the right thing to do but now we’re really seeing the business benefits too.”
We hae meat’s achievements have resulted in it being recognised for sustainability with the Co-Op in Scotland Awards and most recently winning at the Scotland Food and Drink Excellence awards in 2022 for Sustainability Achievements.
FRASER OF ALLANDER INSTITUTE PUBLISHES INITIAL FINDINGS
Disabled adults are significantly less likely to be in work compared to adults without disabilities (write ALLISON CATALANO and CHIRSTY McFADYEN).
In Scotland, 81% of working aged adults without disabilities had jobs in 2021, compared to just under 50% of adults with disabilities. This discrepancy of 31 percentage points – called the “disability employment gap” – is larger in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK (Chart 1).
Scotland has a goal of reducing the disability employment gap by half between 2016 and 2038. The 2021 numbers, encouragingly, show an improvement of 6 percentage points. A higher proportion of disabled people moved into work in Scotland between 2014 and 2021 compared to the UK as a whole, as well.
Chart 1: Gap in employment between people with and without disabilities in Scotland and in the UK, 2014-21
Source: Annual Population Survey, 2014-2021
In 2023, the DWP published a report on the employment of disabled people in the UK. This report looked at the reason why employment among people with disabilities has increased, while employment for the rest of the population has stayed roughly the same.
The DWP report highlighted four reasons behind the growth in the number of disabled people in employment:
Disability prevalence has increased in the UK, and the most common types of disabilities have changed.
The non-disabled employment rate has increased, implying that more jobs are available to both groups.
The disability employment gap has been narrowing overall.
There are more individuals in the working-age population.
The level of detail provided in the DWP report for the UK is difficult to replicate for Scotland with publicly available data: smaller sample sizes north of the border mean that more restrictions are placed on the data available to ensure that appropriate care has been taken with interpreting the robustness of results.
The Fraser of Allander Institute, in collaboration with the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) are undertaking work to understand whether the same factors are driving changes in Scotland, and if not, what is different here and why.
This work is ongoing and future articles will get into more of the detail. This article sets the scene about the scale of the issue in Scotland vs the UK based on what know from data currently available.
What’s the state of disability employment in Scotland?
Scotland has a higher proportion of working-aged disabled people compared to the UK. It also has a lower rate of employment among disabled people, and a larger gap in employment between people with and without disabilities. Employment rates are noticeably different for different types of disabilities in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK, and disabled peoples are less likely to have educational qualifications in Scotland.
How is disability defined?
The current definition used in UK (and Scottish) surveys comes from the Government Statistical Service and the 2010 Equality Act. This change affected data collection from mid-2013 onwards, meaning that it’s not possible to compare current data to data before 2013. Our analysis specifically looks at the data since 2014 as a result.
This definition covers people who report “current physical or mental health conditions of illnesses lasting or expected to last 12 months or more; and that these conditions or illnesses reduce their ability to carry out day-to-day activities.” Previously, the definition was based on the Disability Discrimination Act (2005) (DDA), which applied to “all people with a long term health problem or disability that limits their day-to-day activities.” The slight difference in these terms means that some people may qualify as DDA disabled but not as Equality Act disabled.
Scotland has consistently had a higher proportion of working-aged disabled people.
In 2014, around 18% of the Scottish working-age population were classified as Equality Act disabled.
Since 2014, the number of disabled working-age adults has grown by around 222,000 people, making up over 24% of the working-age population as of 2021. By comparison, the total size of the working-age population only grew by around 31,000 people over the same time period. had a higher proportion of disabled adults in 2014 than the UK average, and this gap has widened over time. The 2021 data shows a further significant divergence, but this may be due to particular issues related to the pandemic and may not persist (Chart 2).
Chart 2: The size of the Scottish population with and without disabilities, and the proportion of the population with disabilities from 2014-21.
Source: Annual Population Survey, 2014-2021
Scotland has a higher disability gap and a lower rate of employment among disabled people.
Employment rates for working-aged people without disabilities in Scotland is roughly the same as in the rest of the UK. Employment rates for disabled people is much lower, however.
Since 2014, disabled people have moved into work faster in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK. The employment gap fell by around 6.5 percentage points between 2014 and 2021 in Scotland, compared to a fall of around 4.5 percentage points for the entire UK (Chart 3).
Chart 3: Proportion of adults between 16-64 that are in work by disability status, Scotland and the UK, 2014-21
Source: Annual Population Survey, 2014-2021
Scotland has different employment rates for people with different types of disabilities.
Unsurprisingly, Scotland has lower employment rates than the UK as a whole for the vast majority of types of disability.
The largest differences in employment rates are for people with diabetes, chest or breathing problems, and difficulty with seeing, hearing, or speech. Scotland fares better in the employment of people with stomach, liver, kidney and digestion problems, for instance, and slightly better for people with autism.[1]
Chart 4: Proportion of the working-age population with disabilities by working status and type of disability, 2022
Source: Annual Population Survey, 2014-2021. * Estimates are based on a small sample size and may not be precise.
Disabled people have lower qualification levels in Scotland.
Disabled people are more likely to have no qualifications than those without disabilities, both in Scotland and the UK. Scottish adults are also more likely to have no qualifications compared to the rest of the UK, although the gap in qualifications for disabled people is larger for Scotland than for the rest of the country (Chart 4).
The proportion of people with no qualifications has been falling in recent years. This may be due to older people, on average, being less likely to have formal qualifications, and as they move to retirement age, the number of working age people without qualifications goes down.
For disabled people, it may also be true that the increase in the number of disabled people have changed the make-up of the disabled population, especially for people who are becoming disabled later in life (for example, due to mental health issues that present post-education).
Chart 5: Proportion of working-age adults with no qualifications by disability status, Scotland & rUK, 2014-21
Source: Annual Population Survey, 2014-2021
Where are there gaps in our knowledge?
As discussed at the start, publicly available data on disability types is severely limited. For example, survey data in Scotland has detailed disaggregation on different types of disability, but only publicly provides information on whether or not someone qualifies as disabled under the 2010 Equality Act definition. The Scottish Government has been making strides to improve this data, however – a 2022 publication analyses disability employment by type of disability, but only examines one year.
One particular issue that we have found is for people who have a learning disability where the data is extremely poor. We will be publishing a new article later this week that sets out some of the particular issues for people with a learning disability.
Our next phase of research will look into more of the detail around employment levels for people in Scotland living with different disabilities based on access to non-public secure data held by the ONS. There may still be limits on the data we are able to use (for example, where robustness thresholds set by the ONS are not met), but we hope we will be able to add to the evidence base here in Scotland and provide better insights for policy makers and stakeholders on where support needs to be focussed.
The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) has unveiled the 20 organisations who will be a part of a groundbreaking HR for Creatives project.
SCVO has partnered with Creative Scotland and Project Manager Kathryn Willens on the action research project to explore the support needed for micro and small creative organisations.
The project incorporates research into participant organisations’ learning journeys in order to share findings so that the wider arts, screen and creative industries can learn from this project.
This will allow the project partners to learn from organisations that access support and to identify where there are key and shared opportunities, challenges, strengths and weaknesses for the sector.
SCVO’s HR Service will now work with them to support them on their HR journey, including an audit of their HR policies and procedures, one-to-one advice and guidance, as well as access to webinars and a peer network.
The partners hope this will Improve people management for arts, screen and creative industries organisations, starting with legal compliance and moving beyond this to help organisations create a space and place to work where their people – staff and freelance practitioners – thrive and where fair work drives success, wellbeing and prosperity.
SCVO, Scotland’s national membership body for the voluntary sector, received over 80 applications from micro to small sized arts, screen and creative industries organisations from across Scotland. All applications were of a high standard, with only 20 places available.
The organisations represent a wide range of artistic practice including animation, digital art, theatre, film, poetry, music and dance. (1)
The number of applications highlights the demand for HR support in the sector especially from micro to small employers, with SCVO planning to offer some support to the organisations that didn’t make it to the shortlist through access to webinars and resources.
SCVO is delighted to be working with Creative Scotland, Kathryn, and research partner Tialt on the HR for Creatives action learning programme, funded by The National Lottery through Creative Scotland.
The programme will kick off in September 2023 and continue for 12 months.
Caroline Christie, SCVO’s Head of HR, said: “We are thrilled with the response to the HR for Creatives programme. This level of interest highlights arts, screen and creative industries organisations commitment to HR and to Fair Work as well as a need for this kind of support.
“HR for Creatives aims to offer support and learning to improve people management for arts, screen and creative industries organisations, support that will enable organisations to create work cultures where their staff and freelancers can thrive and where fair work drives success, wellbeing and prosperity.
“SCVO’s HR Service and the HR for Creatives project team are very excited to start working with the 20 shortlisted organisations and with the research partners, Tialt.”
Ashley Smith-Hammond, Creative Industries Officer at Creative Scotland, said: “As Creative Scotland develops its work in response to the Fair Work agenda, we’re committed to empowering organisations in the arts, screen and creative industries to best support their workforce.
“We’re pleased to partner with SCVO on this vital programme, which responds to challenges that small and micro creative businesses have in accessing appropriate, specialist support around people management.
“In this challenging economic context, it’s an investment in more competent, confident creative businesses and better experience for those in the creative workforce.”
EDINBURGH CLIMATE MARCH AGAINST FOSSIL FUELS – 11AM SAT 16 SEPTEMBER
The End Fossil Fuels March in Edinburgh is one of over 400 worldwide events taking place this weekend ahead of the UN Climate Ambition Summit in New York next week.
++ MARCH DETAILS ++
March meeting point at The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL.
Time: 11am, Saturday 16 September
The march will leave The Mound around 11.30am. It will head up Hanover Street, turn right on to George Street, turn right onto South St David St, across Waverley Bridge, left onto Market Street down past the UK Government building at Sibbald Walk, turn left onto Canongate and head down to the Scottish Parliament where it will end.
March will conclude with speeches outside the Scottish Parliament.
Marchers are calling for a fair and fast phase out of fossil fuels and for both the UK and Scottish Governments to create detailed just transition plans.
The UK Government wants to ‘max out’ existing oil and gas fields and is pledging exploration licences for hundreds of new projects, while the Scottish Government is considering approving a new gas fired power plant at Peterhead.
COLLECTIVE on CALTON HILL REVEAL BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION PROGRAMME
We are so excited to welcome you to our Collective Gala this Sunday 17 September, celebrating five years since opening the newly restored City Observatory as a centre for contemporary art.
Please see the full schedule for the day (above) to help you plan your visit.
We have a special programme of activities running throughout the day, with free drop-in creative play sessions by Frieda Ford, makers’ stalls, introductions to our exhibitions, bookable tours of the site including Cooke telescope and Observatory House, and culminating in a newly commissioned performance by Zoë Gibson.
Please note, Lisa Williams’ Black History walking tour has been postponed to October for Black History Month.
