Written by Xabier Villares

It was in the difficult days of February 2023 when The Melting Pot organised an event to talk to our network about the Cost of Living Crisis and how it was affecting them. Our guests, Carnegie and EVOC, made pertinent presentations, with both mentioning an innovative, people-centred, place-based approach to local economics. They were talking about Community Wealth Building (CWB), and the concept couldn’t fit better with the conversation.

What is Community Wealth Building?

Behind the fancy words that people usually find intimidating, we can define CWB simply as an approach to economic development that emphasises building wealth and ownership within communities, redirecting wealth back into the local economy. Its origins are in Cleveland (USA), initially developed by Democracy Collaborative back in 2005. In the UK, it is championed by the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES).

Underpinning CWB are five interconnecting pillars:

• Plural ownership of the economy
• Progressive procurement
• Making financial power work for local places
• Fair employment and just labour markets
• Socially productive use of land and property

A remarkable fact is that Scotland became the first place in the world to adopt a national CWB approach, leading to five pilot projects across the country: Clackmannanshire, Fife, Glasgow City Region, South of Scotland and Western Isles. You can have a look at this fantastic guide by EDAS to get a better understanding.

Our own Community Wealth Building journey

In the pilot scheme, Edinburgh and the Lothians are not a priority for the immediate future. So, for the last few months, Charlie Wright from EVOC and I ended up taking matters into our own hands! We dedicated some quality time to draft a possible framework for CWB in Edinburgh. We sensed that a huge number of initiatives and community groups would be very interested in re-thinking the priorities of our local economy. Our idea was connecting Edinburgh communities across the map – a space that Charlie knows very well – with The Melting Pot’s community of social innovators, where I worked as a Community Coordinator for three years.

A key event for us took place in October 2023. EVOC ran a conference focused on CWB, joined by no less than Neil McInroy, Democracy Collaborative’s Global Lead (see his insightful keynote presentation here). To capture some of the rich, collective knowledge at Norton Park that day, we adapted Mendelow’s classic stakeholder management matrix, to plot the likely relationships between key institutions and the CWB five pillars. Attendees had the chance to share their perceptions on what would be the relevant anchor institution, expressed in terms of power and interest, and reflected in a map.

The outputs from this event were very helpful in developing this tool further, and Charlie and I planned a series of events to inform a strategy for Edinburgh and the Lothians, inviting all kinds of enterprises and individuals who might be interested in collaborating:

November 2023, “Edinburgh Power Map Workshop”

After gathering valuable feedback, we made new changes to our newborn tool. This meeting became a specific mapping session, inviting authors and experts in different fields (e.g. sustainability, refurbishment, funding) and with diverse backgrounds, considering the five pillars in our equation. The result was a rich mosaic of interactions, creatively navigating the who’s who of Edinburgh’s land & assets, financial infrastructure, procurement, ownership and employment in order to understand the nature of power in the city and explore new ways of creating a more participatory economy. The occasion helped us to establish new bonds with other actors sharing the same concerns. Here, it’s worth mentioning the influence of Who Runs Edinburgh? by scholar David McCrone; a nice dive into the history and current situation of power dynamics in the city.

March 2024, “Make Space for Change”

The mapping event led us to reflect on the gigantic task we were aiming to undertake, and be aware of our own capacity and strengths. We managed to put order in all those maps, and after attending a few events, and reading numerous books and guides, we reached an important conclusion. Among the aforementioned pillars, we considered community land and assets as particularly impactful for a range of reasons:

• There’s an obvious issue with the lack of affordable space for community groups in the city
• Focusing on this, we would help to shift the structure of property in the city towards a more socially productive one
• If a viable model was found, local communities could benefit enormously from the income liberated from paying ridiculously high rents
• The expertise shared by all the new organisations that were joining us in this journey made it easier (e.g. Whale Arts completing a successful community asset transfer process).

However, finding affordable premises in the city is not an easy task, so this gathering of community and voluntary sector organisations helped us to learn more about the situation.

April 2024, “Toward a Just and Equitable Community Action Plan”

The landscape was becoming clearer, and a formula emerged naturally. How about helping communities across the city to partner with social enterprises, cooperatives and employee-owned firms (plural ownership, progressive procurement), to take over buildings (socially productive use of land
and property) with affordable prices (making financial power work for communities), in a sustainable business model? That was sounding like a plan!

May 2024. “Edinburgh Power Map Workshop – Focusing on Community Land Ownership”

The next logical step was to develop an Edinburgh Land Cooperative that may facilitate these operations. That has been our focus since then, liaising with a wide range of stakeholders to create a map of assets to shape a long-term strategy.

So where are we now?

Today, things have moved forward. The initiative, originally driven by The Melting Pot and EVOC, is entering a new stage. It would be difficult to thank all the people involved in shaping this idea, but just to mention a few: Aythan and Joanne from EALA Impacts, Tiki and Leah from Whale Arts, Heather from Community Land Trust, Naomi from CLES, Harry from SOSCH, and also acknowledging the kind and continuous support of Community Renewal Trust and John Halliday.

The project keeps evolving, and for now, you can have a look at what we’re preparing at Building Co-Operation. Everybody is welcome to join us. We hope to bring more news about it very soon. This city and its people deserve it!