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Past Events

Making the connections: How community development helps to deliver national and local outcomes

Community Development Alliance Scotland Seminar, in association with COSLA and Perth & Kinross Council, 18 March 2008

Community development is an important but often invisible process which helps people to achieve a wide range of the quality of life outcomes that are reflected in national and local outcomes and targets for local authorities and their partners. This seminar aimed to bring this process to light and discuss how it can be better recognised and supported.

It was designed to appeal to people in local authorities and partner organisations (including elected members) who are concerned with finding effective ways of achieving outcomes, whether or not they are actively involved in community development.

Speakers included:
Fiona Lees, Chief Executive, East Ayrshire Council
Sean Stronach, CLD Manager, Learning Connections, Scottish Government
Alan Barr, Scottish Community Development Centre

Workshops were held on how community development supports each of the national strategic priorities

Report of event

New Powers for Communities?

Community Development Alliance Scotland/SCDC Seminar 1 November 2007

The Scottish Government was elected on a platform which includes proposals for ‘new powers for communities’. These include:

• giving deprived communities the ability to opt for a new ‘empowered status’, which might allow local people to co-manage a proportion of public spending and services
• devolving greater responsibilities to community councils, including possible responsibility for a portion of current local spending.

This Seminar allowed people from all the sectors involved to look at what this might mean in practice and what community development can do to help make such powers work effectively. Our discussions will contribute directly to the work that the Scottish Government has begun on the implementation of these proposals.

Speakers included:     Stephen Maxwell (Scottish Council of Voluntary Organisations)
Alasdair McKinlay (Communities Scotland)

Report of event

Building the Agenda for Change

Community Development Alliance Scotland Seminar 26 January 2007

This seminar brought together a wide range of chief officers, managers, and practitioners in order to consider emerging issues for community development in Scotland and, in particular, to identify key priorities for the Alliance in 2007. The following are available to download:

Keynote speech by Professor Gary Craig, Professor of Social Justice, University of Hull and President of the International Association for Community Development

A Manifesto for Communtiy Development in Scotland? Presentation by Stewart Murdoch, Chair of CDAS (PowerPoint slides for this presentation)

Building the Agenda for Change Background paper on issues facing community development in Scotland, by Peter Taylor

The Implications of Outcome Based Funding

Community Development Alliance Scotland Seminar 3rd June 2005

This seminar examined the implications of outcome based funding for both policy and practice. The presentations from the following speakers are available to download:

• “The Implications of Outcomes” Stewart Murdoch - Chair CDAS;
• A Single Outcome Agreement Jon Harris – Strategic Director CoSLA;
• Working to Outcome Agreements Alan Hosie – Dundee BNSF

The Implications of Outcome Based Funding PowerPoint Presentations (100 Kb)

Also available to download

A more detailed paper on his presentation Outcome based practice from: Alan Barr – Co-Director SCDC.

Outcome based community development practice (34 Kb)

A more detailed paper on her presentation Professional Contradictions and Challenges: Mae Shaw, University of Edinburgh

Professional Contradictions and Challenges (53Kb)

Budapest Declaration Seminar

PowerPoint Presentations

A series of presentations from the seminar are available for download. All presentations are in zip format. To view a presentations, download the zip file and extract the PowerPoint file.

Introduction to the Budapest Declaration (1.4 Mb)
Stewart Murdoch - CDAS

Immigration and Asylum and the Budapest Declaration (95 Kb)
Mick Doyle - Scottish Refugee Council

Community Development – sustainable development and the environment (640 Kb) Deryck Irving - Greenspace Scotland