Welcome and thank you all for coming today.
Since April last year we have again been very busy beavering away, spreading the word, having endless meetings and I know we have made huge strides but I do sometimes wonder.
In July last year we held a fundraising ceilidh in the Falkland Hall and it was really the first time that we as a group had properly worked together. There was the odd snarl from me and possibly from others too but we ploughed on and ‘discussed’ in a fairly adult fashion and it all got sorted. It is proposed that we have another fundraiser this summer another opportunity to snarl at each other whilst having a weekend beside the sea at Tentsmuir – just for information it is the weekend of 15/16 July and tickets will become available. This property is privately owned and the weekend will not be open to the public in general. Tickets will only be available to supporters, friends, family and friends of any of those categories. This event will not be publicly advertised so all efforts must be made by Vivarium members to raise interest, enthusiasm and ultimately money.
The ceilidh itself was a resounding success, good fun and we also made some money. I am dwelling on this aspect of our Vivarium efforts – the ‘working together’ because it has become evident to me anyway, particularly after the Danish trip that we need to have a stronger group of people who really are prepared to commit and work together. Obviously not everyone can do everything all the time but I do feel it is very important that we somehow become a larger, more coherent and proactive group - not just to spread the workload but to enable and encourage others to have real involvement and have ownership of the whole project.
This is a dig at the ‘invisible electronic people’ again.
I really don’t know anything about stocks and shares but in my wee brain hear how companies succeed and wonder if this is one way to think of this project – what I mean is that if a company has a good and marketable idea/product then they find Venture Capitalists and persuade them to invest, this can happen several times and if people have faith in the project they keep on investing and when the company floats on the Stock Exchange they all pat each other on the back and become even richer.
I feel a parallel here with Vivarium except no-one is pouring money into the project but in order to get this project floated we need time and commitment poured in from people so that eventually we can all pat each other on the back confident that our lives in old age will be enriched thro’ co-housing. I suppose that the John Lewis employee owned type of business is also to be considered – put effort in and reap the rewards. I also don’t mean ‘don’t give us money’ – please do.
In Denmark the groups that we met there had all worked together for at least 2 years and had had support from outside to help with planning their new lives, their house layout and design and very importantly conflict resolution we need to look at other ways of getting new members, getting more folk involved in the day to day business of trying to get project up and running before we all are put into horrible places to be looked after. Membership of Vivarium, in terms of what we offer is getting clearer but we do still need to work out how to incorporate ‘corporate’ members. We ourselves are members of Age Concern, Development Trust Assoc. (who else?) and have benefited greatly from these organisations in terms of attendance at conferences which provide such good networking opportunities as well as information support and even a wee bit of money.
We do nearly have charitable status and can then properly be regarded as an educational charity. This will also provide us with a sensible constitution and leverage for making even more progress and possibly able to access more funds to keep us going.
Income has remained pretty pathetic but money and support has come in from Fife Council who agrees to ‘endorse’ the project! We queried as to whether we could say Vivarium working in partnership with Fife Council but, no that was a step too far and they were safer with ‘endorse’.
In August last year we met with 2 representatives of Communities Scotland and regarded that as a huge breakthrough. They were interested and encouraging. We all agreed that if Vivarium is to be able to offer affordable social housing there has to be a policy change in terms of the definition of ‘need’.
In terms of gaining support from the powers that be we are pleased to report progress. We now have all the political parties interested in Vivarium – there is one exception to this – the boys in blue are adept at ignoring us! We are grateful for this support and in fact are meeting with Roseanna Cunningham next Wednesday. It was she who brought up co-housing in a Parliamentary debate last month which in turn caused me to write a letter sharpish to Malcolm Chisholm, Communities Minister. I brought the letter if anyone would care to see it. I cc’d it to many others and we have had a gratifying response – Sir Menzies Campbell and Andrew Arbuckle both asking to be told how he responded. We were basically told that he might consider a meeting sometime but the Minister was a busy man – have to say – yeah, and we aren’t? I then received another letter from the Communities Minister in which his private Secretary says that the Minister would like to study the outcome of the feasibility study and the findings from our fact finding trips to DK and Holland. It is intended that we send this information to Communities Scotland who will in turn keep the Minister fully informed of developments.
Clare has continued as Treasurer and kept us all in order and prevented us spending too much of our paltry sums of money. Hugh has been a star as far as pulling together all the bits and pieces required to make us appear fairly competent and coherent. We lost Edith off the S. group but would like to thank her for support, we have gained Evie who gives us credibility and is the Vivarium librarian – I wouldn’t like to say that after a couple of glasses of wine…….
Hugh, who is a good public speaker and myself as shadow/back up person have spoken at a several events including a WEA group, a conference on ageing in Dumfries and the local Rotary Club – who it appeared were less than interested. We have a rather prestigious invitation to a conference in Harrogate in May where we are described as ‘ Cutting Edge’ jings. Hugh is making appalling jokes about topiary.
I have just read over my last years report and found that some things haven’t changed or progressed – for eg the Report from QMUC, the conference report from GCU or not any significant degree our bank balance. We were immensely pleased to have been awarded Lottery money to have 2 fact finding trips to Holland and Denmark. Both trips have been invaluable to us and really were hard work not much play.
Another achievement is that we do now have finally an Environmental charter so we progress and certainly don’t give up. We as a group failed totally to get anywhere at all with Scottish Enterprise Fife – pity but they too don’t recognise social enterprise and see us as a body who want money to build houses. This is sadly a common misconception and one we are working to change but it isn’t easy.
Sustainability is a huge buzzword these days and it is reported that the ODPM has not got it right in the massive developments happening down south – sustainability to me means financial, social, environmental and I have lost one.
In Denmark we were most interested in the funding aspect of the co-housing groups we met and found that they can borrow money for these initiatives at a mere 3% - I think we need to check this out and see if Danish banks can work here and might consider lending us money at equally good rates..
The links and interest grow exponentially and we battle on.
Thanks to all who have supported us both formally, informally, officially and unofficially.
Tomorrow Monday 1st May BBC Radio Scotland is doing a broadcast from Lilacbank (live)
Anne Pattullo
Chairperson 2006