A café, a community and the power of doing things differently
Rachel Searle, Head of Communities and Impact.
So, I’m sitting in the Trotters café in New Cumnock. It’s past one o’clock and a few tables are being cleared, suggesting it’s been a busy lunchtime. Four elderly gents have just left. They look as though they may have come from a funeral. Across from me, four women are enjoying a chat and catch-up over their lattes. A single gent is busy on his phone in another corner.
Another wee group is getting ready to leave, and an elderly lady arrives with a little toddler. There are big hugs with one of the café staff, so perhaps they’ve just popped in for a mum cuddle. My order has just been taken. The young man serving me tells me this is his first time working in a café and that the training he received was great and taught him everything he needed to know. He certainly seems a very accomplished server. I later learn that he’ll shortly be heading off to university and that the café will be sorry to lose him.
It’s great to be having lunch here.
I’ve had reason to come through New Cumnock many times over the years and have long been aware of this building when it stood as an empty, neglected space on the town’s Main Street. The vision and relentless hard work of New Cumnock Development Trust’s Board and staff has transformed this historic red sandstone building into a prominent and welcoming community space. It is now home to a café currently providing six jobs for New Cumnock residents. It also accommodates the Trust’s three-person staff team, alongside co-working space and meeting rooms. The refurbished building also includes a shop selling local and other goods, as well as a ‘remakery’ training and workshop space for repairing, reusing and repurposing textiles, furniture, electronics and other household items. But perhaps what strikes me most as I sit here is that this is clearly more than just a café.
Jenna, who works here, talks about how some people simply come in to sit and chat. New Cumnock doesn’t have spaces where people can just hang out together like this. She recognises that it’s still early days, but says how nice the atmosphere already feels and how customers often comment on how ‘fresh and relaxed’ the space is. And sitting here watching people come and go, it’s easy to see what she means.
One of Foundation Scotland’s touchpoints with New Cumnock is through the South Kyle Community Benefit Fund - a £1.5 million index linked annual fund involving New Cumnock and three other communities. The arrangement is different from other multi-community community benefit models in Scotland. Rather than each community operating autonomously with its agreed share or operating a competitive area wide strategic fund, the community benefit is bundled into two-year allocations. This enables larger sums of money to be deployed to projects at the time when they can make the greatest difference, while also giving communities greater certainty to budget and plan ahead.
The thinking behind this is simple but important.
Communities brought together through a shared community benefit arrangement are not necessarily at the same stage of development. They will have different priorities, different levels of capacity and different projects ready to move forward at different times. So, rather than expecting all four communities to follow the same schedule or compete with one another for funding, the arrangement gives each community the flexibility to access substantial investment for ‘flagship’ projects when each is best placed to make use of it.
Alongside each community receiving assured funding for local grant schemes, education & training funds and a resource pot for paid support, the ‘flagship fund’ means that over the four-year period from 2023 to 2027, each community will receive approximately £700,000 towards activity and plans that may have been difficult to achieve through smaller annual payments.
New Cumnock was the first community to benefit from this ‘flagship’ approach, with a larger lump-sum investment helping it accelerate its work on Trotters. The arrangement recognises that fairness in multi-community arrangements does not necessarily mean that everyone needs to receives funding at exactly the same time. In fact distributing funds equally and simultaneously can just mean that some funds sit unallocated while projects are being developed, potentially delaying other projects that are ready and able to move forward. This approach avoids that problem. It allows funding to be deployed when it can have the greatest impact, while ensuring that every community has an equitable opportunity to benefit over the four-year cycle according to its own needs, priorities and readiness.
Trotters is a great example of the benefits of this more pragmatic approach and what it enables. Like transforming an empty building into an economic asset and a place of work, enterprise, learning, opportunity and social connection. Creating space for four women to catch up over coffee, for four elderly gents to mourn the loss of a peer, for a young person to gain some valuable work experience before heading off to university. And for a toddler to steal a cuddle from her working mum.
The South Kyle Community Benefit Fund is a striking example of a flexible, collaborative approach to community benefit that balances fairness across all four communities with recognition that fairness does not mean treating every community identically. Each community is assured an equitable share of the benefit but only at the time when it is ready to make the greatest difference.
Read more about the fund here.