210929_PerformanceCttee_Paper 3 BGPP

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee Paper 3 29/10/21

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY PER­FORM­ANCE COMMITTEE

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: BADENOCH GREAT PLACE PROJECT

Pre­pared by: Liz Hende­r­son Rur­al Devel­op­ment & Com­munit­ies Manager

	Murray Ferguson, Director of Planning and Place

Pur­pose

This paper provides a sum­mary and brief review of the Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject (BGPP) which com­pleted deliv­ery on 30 Sep 2021.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Per­form­ance Com­mit­tee is asked to: a) Note the achieve­ments of the Pro­ject and all that it has delivered; b) Note the key chal­lenges and learn­ing points arising from the pro­ject; and c) Con­sider the leg­acy arrange­ments that have been put in place and how the impact of the pro­ject can be max­im­ised as the next NP Part­ner­ship Plan is developed.

Stra­tegic Summary

1. The Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject (BGPP), with the sub-title ​“Badenoch Her­it­age: Bring­ing the Past to the 21^st Cen­tury Pro­ject”, was a three-year, £438,000 part­ner­ship pro­ject, fun­ded by Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund (NLHF) and oth­ers. The pro­ject was com­pleted on 30 Sept. 2021. The Pro­ject had four aims to deliv­er a Place: a) Where there is a strong des­tin­a­tion with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park and Scot­land with a repu­ta­tion based on its her­it­age, where the many key her­it­age attrac­tions and fea­tures of interest are pro­moted to cre­ate a great vis­it­or; b) Where the rich her­it­age assets are turned into a wide range of exper­i­ences and eco­nom­ic oppor­tun­it­ies; c) Where a wider range of people are more dir­ectly involved in caring for and present­ing the area’s her­it­age; and d) Which is man­aged by a sus­tain­able part­ner­ship of organ­isa­tions and com­munit­ies who work and embed her­it­age at the heart of their plans.

2. An inter­im report was presen­ted to the CNPA Board in March 2021 as part of a review of major pro­jects and is avail­able here (refer to the final Board paper): https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​w​o​r​k​i​n​g​-​t​o​g​e​t​h​e​r​/​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​s​/​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​/​b​o​a​r​d​-2021 – 03-12/

3. The pro­ject was based on devel­op­ing a part­ner­ship of pub­lic agen­cies and com­munity bod­ies to employ one pro­ject man­ager and a mod­est budget over three years. There were no funds for cap­it­al devel­op­ment pro­jects. A draft ver­sion of the final pro­ject report is attached at Annex I.

Key Achieve­ments of the Project

1. A pack­age of over 20 inter­con­nec­ted sub-pro­jects included research; cre­ation of visu­al, digit­al and audio mater­i­als; brand­ing, des­tin­a­tion devel­op­ment and place-mak­ing; her­it­age cel­eb­ra­tion; stim­u­la­tion of a new loc­al char­ity; train­ing and volun­teer devel­op­ment; and mar­ket­ing and inter­pret­a­tion. The pro­ject cul­min­ated with a week-long Badenoch Her­it­age Fest­iv­al, a cel­eb­ra­tion con­fer­ence on 25^th Sept, and a present­a­tion at the inter­na­tion­al ​“Inter­pret Europe” Conference.

2. The Pro­ject brought an increased aware­ness of the cul­tur­al her­it­age that exists with­in this part of the Nation­al Park and the oppor­tun­it­ies that exist to cel­eb­rate and util­ise it. It has brought com­munit­ies and part­ner organ­isa­tions togeth­er around a com­mon theme.

3. The final pro­ject eval­u­ation, under­taken to a format that is set by the major fund­ing part­ner NLHF, is still under way. Fur­ther inform­a­tion on the Pro­ject can be found at the new, com­munity-man­aged web­site for the des­tin­a­tion at https://​badenoch​story​lands​.com/.

4. Not­with­stand­ing the inev­it­able chal­lenges presen­ted by the Cov­id-19 pan­dem­ic, the Pro­ject delivered on all the aims and the major­ity of the ori­gin­ally envis­aged out­comes and achieved almost full expendit­ure. The pro­ject also attrac­ted a fur­ther £21,500 of new match-fund­ing (from His­tor­ic Envir­on­ment Scot­land, Green Recov­ery Fund and Big Lot­tery) into the area.

5. Where it was not pos­sible to deliv­er spe­cif­ic actions (such as recruit­ing a second cohort of Volun­teer Ambas­sad­ors due to the pan­dem­ic) the pro­ject adap­ted the deliv­ery pro­gramme to take advant­age of emer­ging oppor­tun­it­ies, in this case work­ing with the Folk Museum’s volun­teers instead.

6. Key out­puts of the pro­ject included: a) Iden­ti­fic­a­tion of the top 77, out of 3000+, iden­ti­fied sites in the area, and devel­op­ment of asso­ci­ated stor­ies and themes around them. b) Cre­ation and pro­mo­tion of the ​“Badenoch: The Story­lands” brand. c) Des­tin­a­tion devel­op­ment includ­ing mar­ket­ing mater­i­als and new walk­ing, cyc­ling and driv­ing itin­er­ar­ies. d) Des­tin­a­tion pro­mo­tion with Vis­itScot­land, loc­al busi­ness skills-build­ing and travel-trade pro­mo­tion. e) Devel­op­ment and launch of new com­munity-man­aged web­site for the area www​.badenoch​story​lands​.com.

f) Devel­op­ment and launch of innov­at­ive Mobile App which includes aug­men­ted real­ity images, 13 itin­er­ar­ies plus embed­ded stor­ies and music. g) All asso­ci­ated imagery, audio and visu­al mater­i­als includ­ing aer­i­al pho­to­graphy, story col­la­tion and record­ing, music com­pos­i­tion, map­ping, digit­al cre­ations and vari­ous films. h) Com­pre­hens­ive Gael­ic place-name lan­guage study and a Shinty Trail i) Recruit­ment and train­ing of Volun­teer Ambas­sad­ors. j) Organ­ising and deliv­er­ing four her­it­age fest­ivals: 2018 (phys­ic­al), 2019 (phys­ic­al), 2020 (vir­tu­al) and 2021 (mixed), final cel­eb­ra­tion Con­fer­ence and con­cert. k) Deliv­er­ing mul­tiple events includ­ing walks, talks, and skills-based events and work­ing with loc­al schools on her­it­age careers. l) Cre­ation of a Digit­al Archive at Am Baille https://​www​.ambaile​.org​.uk. m) Cre­ation of the Story of Badenoch film (fea­tur­ing Ruthven bar­racks). n) Deliv­er­ing addi­tion­al pro­jects includ­ing the Badenoch Story­lands Ses­sions and the Croft Gow­an Archae­olo­gic­al Dig.

Key Chal­lenges and Les­sons Learned

1. Top down and bot­tom-up: This pro­ject was built on strong found­a­tions of part­ner and com­munity engage­ment. The area had been iden­ti­fied as a pri­or­ity area in NP Part­ner­ship Plan. The loc­al com­munity had just fin­ished some sig­ni­fic­ant audit­ing of loc­al her­it­age assets. The Pro­ject Man­ager was employed by a loc­al com­munity body, Vol­un­tary Action Badenoch and Strath­spey, and was based in the Badenoch area to pro­mote loc­al lead­er­ship and buy-in.

2. Achiev­ing full part­ner buy-in: It was rel­at­ively easy to get organ­isa­tions to fund the pro­ject and come along to Board meet­ings – but much harder for them to embed what the pro­ject was try­ing to do and get great­er value for the place out of their day-to-day operations.

3. Cov­id – 19 Pan­dem­ic: This res­ul­ted in the Pro­ject effect­ively los­ing the whole 2020 Spring/​Autumn. Thank­fully a 9‑month exten­sion was nego­ti­ated and this was cru­cial in enabling the des­tin­a­tion devel­op­ment work to reach the stage it is now at.

4. Man­aging com­plex­ity: Even with a mod­est budget this was a com­plex pro­ject to man­age with lots of inter­de­pend­en­cies. In order to keep it on track, both CNPA and VABS have had to invest more of their time that was ori­gin­ally envis­aged to get effect­ive out­puts. Lack of pro­ject staff resource when the ori­gin­al Pro­ject Officer left, meant some non-spe­cial­ist ele­ments were con­trac­ted out. These con­tracts also needed to be pro­cured and then man­aged, them­selves tak­ing up staff time.

5. Pro­ject struc­ture: This some­times exacer­bated the com­plex man­age­ment and admin­is­tra­tion issues. CNPA was the Lead Part­ner and account­able body for the NLHF and oth­er fund­ing (so had all the fin­an­cial and pro­cure­ment respons­ib­il­ity) but the Pro­ject Officer was employed by a part­ner organ­isa­tion. There was some­times a dis­con­nect between pro­ject activ­ity and CNPA admin­is­trat­ive pro­cesses, adding anoth­er lay­er of complexity.

6. Pro­ject Man­age­ment: Prop­er plan­ning and budget man­age­ment and clear pro­ced­ures from the start will pay dividends as the pro­ject pro­gresses. This is a Pro­ject respons­ib­il­ity and resource at the appro­pri­ate level should be factored into the pro­ject team from Day I.

7. Sub-des­tin­a­tions and the Park: The key visitor/​tourism ini­ti­at­ives or des­tin­a­tions with­in the Park, each of which is try­ing to strengthen their offer­ing in a sus­tain­able and loc­ally-man­aged way (e.g. Badenoch, Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et area, the Dark Sky Park, Snow Roads Scen­ic Route, Cat­er­an Coun­try, etc.) all need to be anchored with­in the Nation­al Park and pro­moted con­sist­ently and learn­ing off each oth­er. This is a key issue to con­sider in the devel­op­ment of the NP Part­ner­ship Plan and the asso­ci­ated Tour­ism Action Plan.

Leg­acy Arrangements

1. The Pro­ject has put the build­ing blocks in place from which it is hoped the com­munity and part­ners will con­tin­ue to devel­op the area to sus­tain a vibrant rur­al com­munity and a place tour­ists will choose to vis­it and pro­long their stay.

2. A Leg­acy Plan has been pre­pared and imple­ment­a­tion will be over­seen by a Leg­acy Board which will con­sist of VABS (Chair), CNPA, Badenoch Her­it­age and the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship – the CBP will be a cru­cial part­ner in pro­mot­ing the area as a des­tin­a­tion. The Leg­acy Plan out­lines how the invest­ment made dur­ing the pro­ject will be secured and developed for the future. The aspir­a­tion is that the leg­acy will facil­it­ate new pro­jects that will build on the com­munit­ies’ assets and res­ult in new oppor­tun­it­ies for ongo­ing com­munity bene­fit. A Mar­ket­ing Plan spe­cifies the key activ­it­ies that are required in the short, medi­um and longer term to sup­port the des­tin­a­tion devel­op­ment. CNPA are sup­port­ing the ini­tial phase of work via Badenoch Her­it­age to ensure basic infra­struc­ture such as inter­pret­a­tion pan­els and inform­a­tion is in place for the 2022 tour­ist sea­son and can be man­aged sustainably.

3. The Story­land Ses­sions, one ongo­ing and innov­at­ive leg­acy pro­ject that was stim­u­lated by the Cairngorms Green Recov­ery Fund, is very well sum­mar­ised here https://​www​.merry​n​glover​.com/​t​h​e​-​s​t​o​r​y​l​a​n​d​s​-​s​e​s​s​ions/

4. Vis­itScot­land has des­ig­nated the com­ing year as ​“Scotland’s Year of Stor­ies 2022” which will be a show­case of the country’s rich lit­er­at­ure, oral tra­di­tions, myths and legends. Lord Thurso (Vis­itScot­land) Chair made the point at the cel­eb­ra­tion con­fer­ence that the Badenoch Pro­ject has already set the stand­ard for what oth­er pro­jects should now try and achieve.

Liz Hende­r­son Mur­ray Fer­guson 5 Octo­ber 2021 lizhenderson@​cairngorms.​co.​uk murrayferguson@​cairngorms.​co.​uk