Community Land Scotland

Community Land Scotland received a grant from the Emerging Futures Fund to explore how and why six different community landowners in Scotland were able to respond so effectively to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The project, ‘Owning our Future’, is working with creative facilitators to help these community projects to share their experiences, tell their stories and, together, imagine what alternative futures might be possible. The facilitators have used a process of narrative change to explore how these community landowners have supported their communities through the pandemic, and to help these communities explore their hopes for their places and societies after the pandemic. Each of the six communities have filmed parts of this process, leading to the production of a short film. The hope is that these stories and narrative change projects will be shared with communities across Scotland to influence policy change at a local and national level.

Land is at the heart of so many social issues - and their solutions. This project’s endeavours to collect evidence for the efficacy of returning its stewardship to the commons is a key step in germinating the seeds of imagination for what life on the land could look like when governed by communities, for communities.

You can find out more about the project here, and watch the two films released thus far here.