Introducing the next generation to community ownership
Over the last couple of years, Community Land Scotland has been working on developing educational resources to raise awareness of community land and building ownership within schools and the role it can play in creating and sustaining resilient, successful communities – in the process building better futures for local young people. There are two strands, paper-based/downloadable lesson ideas for pupils in P7 and an app-based resource, called ‘The Quest’ which takes students in S1/S2 through the eight stages of a community buy-out.
As well as raising awareness of community land ownership, Community Land Scotland wishes to encourage more young people to get involved in local democratic decision-making, which would include acting as Young Directors on community landowner Boards. The resources also raise awareness of rural community development as a career option for young people in an effort to stem the flow of rural depopulation.
THE QUEST
The Quest has been piloted at a number of rural schools in Scotland on Mull and the Western Isles. These areas were identified as good locations to test the resources, primarily due to the existing density of community land owners. In 2022, an urban version of ‘The Quest’ will be developed and piloted in areas which are seeing increasing numbers of urban community buy-outs.
During the pilot phase the schools worked closely with their local community landowners with pupils going on field trips to visit their local community land and buildings and income generating projects. It is envisaged that when ‘The Quest’ is rolled out across Scotland both urban and rural schools will work with their local community land and building owners
It was really interesting to learn about things which relate to where we live.
Pupil, Sir E Scott High School, North Harris
School Experience
For the Community Land Scotland Conference, held in May 2022, a short film was made about the experience of the pupils and the teacher from The Sir E Scott High School on North Harris.
Community Land Scotland hopes that ‘The Quest’ (urban and rural) and the P7 resources will be available early in 2023. It is also envisaged that these resources will be translated into Gaelic.
If you would like to find out more about the educational resources, please e-mail info@communitylandscotland.org.uk
We also got to go around some places including the wind turbines and find out how they worked.
Pupil, Sir E Scott High School, North Harris