240628FBPaper4GaelicLanguagePlanJun2024

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Paper 4 Form­al Board 28 June 2024 Page 1 of 7

For decision Title: Adop­tion of the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan 2024 – 28 Pre­pared by: Oliv­er Dav­ies, Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Engagement

Stra­tegic Context

1. The Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan has a spe­cif­ic sec­tion on Gael­ic lan­guage and cul­ture. a) Object­ive B8 — Encour­age great­er use of Gael­ic in the Nation­al Park b) Tar­get — Increased oppor­tun­it­ies for indi­vidu­als and com­munit­ies to engage with the Gael­ic lan­guage and culture.
2. The Park Author­ity Cor­por­ate Plan sets out a) Dir­ect Deliv­ery — Devel­op the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan for the Park Author­ity. b) Indir­ect Deliv­ery — Pro­mote Gael­ic, espe­cially though work on sus­tain­able tour­ism, com­munity devel­op­ment and rel­ev­ant her­it­age pro­jects Purpose
3. This paper sum­mar­ises the res­ults of a six week con­sulta­tion on our new Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan 2024 — 28 and out­lines changes made as a res­ult of pub­lic feed­back. Recommendations
4. The board is asked to: a) Review the res­ults of the pub­lic con­sulta­tion and approve the draft Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan 2024 — 28, ahead of it being sub­mit­ted to Bòrd na Gàidh­lig for final com­ments / approv­al. Stra­tegic policy consideration
5. The Gael­ic Lan­guage (Scot­land) Act 2005 was passed by the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment with a view to secur­ing the status of the Gael­ic lan­guage as an offi­cial lan­guage of Scot­land, com­mand­ing equal respect to the Eng­lish language.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Paper 4 Form­al Board 28 June 2024 Page 2 of 7

1. One of the key fea­tures of the 2005 Act is the pro­vi­sion enabling Bòrd na Gàidh­lig to require a pub­lic author­ity to pre­pare a Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan. This pro­vi­sion was designed to ensure that the pub­lic sec­tor in Scot­land plays its part in cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able future for Gael­ic by rais­ing the status and pro­file of the lan­guage and cre­at­ing prac­tic­al oppor­tun­it­ies for its use.
2. The Park Author­ity is required to pro­duce a new Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan every five years with­in the frame­work of the Gael­ic Lan­guage (Scot­land) Act 2005 and in line with the Nation­al Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan 2023 — 28. It should set out how we will use Gael­ic in the oper­a­tion of our func­tions, how we will enable the use of Gael­ic when com­mu­nic­at­ing with the pub­lic and key part­ners, and how we will pro­mote and devel­op Gaelic.
3. The Park Authority’s draft Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan was pre­pared in accord­ance with stat­utory cri­ter­ia set out in the Act and has regard to the Nation­al Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan and the Guid­ance on the Devel­op­ment of Gael­ic Lan­guage Plans.

About our Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan

1. The Park Author­ity recog­nises that Gael­ic is an integ­ral part of Scot­land and the Nation­al Park’s her­it­age, iden­tity and cul­tur­al life. We are com­mit­ted to the object­ives set out in the Nation­al Plan for Gael­ic – which is recog­nised in our Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan under object­ive B8 – and have put in place the neces­sary struc­tures and ini­ti­at­ives to ensure that Gael­ic has a sus­tain­able future in Scot­land and the Cairngorms Nation­al Park.
2. We recog­nise that the pos­i­tion of Gael­ic is extremely fra­gile and, if Gael­ic is to be revital­ised as a liv­ing lan­guage in Scot­land, a con­cer­ted effort on the part of gov­ern­ment, the pub­lic and private sec­tors, com­munity organ­isa­tions and indi­vidu­al speak­ers is required to: a) Enhance the status of Gael­ic. b) Pro­mote the acquis­i­tion and learn­ing of Gael­ic. c) Encour­age the increased use of Gaelic.
3. Fol­low­ing a three month con­sulta­tion peri­od involving over 250 responses, Bòrd na Gàidh­lig pub­lished the Nation­al Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan 2023 – 28 in Decem­ber 2023. Unfor­tu­nately, this pub­lic­a­tion came too late to dir­ectly impact the draft­ing of our new Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Paper 4 Form­al Board 28 June 2024 Page 3 of 7

1. Non­ethe­less, through ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tions with the Bòrd, we have made a con­cer­ted effort to align our plan with the sub­stant­ive aims of the new nation­al strategy and, fol­low­ing detailed dis­cus­sions with their Chief Exec­ut­ive, agreed the fol­low­ing three stra­tegic aims: a) Increas­ing the use of Gael­ic with­in our organ­isa­tion and encour­aging more people to use Gael­ic, more often when they inter­act with us. b) Increas­ing the oppor­tun­ity for people to learn Gael­ic as part of our day to day oper­a­tions. c) Pro­mot­ing a pos­it­ive image of Gael­ic whenev­er we can as part of our day to day oper­a­tions as an organisation.
2. The Bòrd also set a series of cor­por­ate ser­vice aims around ​‘status’ (cov­er­ing logo, brand and sig­nage), ​‘com­mu­nic­at­ing with the pub­lic’, ​‘inform­a­tion’ (news releases, social media, pub­lic­a­tions, web­sites etc), ​‘staff’ (recruit­ment, induc­tions, train­ing etc) and ​‘Gael­ic lan­guage cor­pus’ (includ­ing using Gael­ic place names). Taken togeth­er with the above stra­tegic pri­or­it­ies, these form the core struc­ture of our new Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan 2024 — 28.
3. If approved by the Park Author­ity board, the Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan (see Annex 1) will be sub­mit­ted to the Bòrd for final com­ments and approv­al on 5 July 2024.

Stake­hold­er engagement

1. Sec­tion 3(6) of the 2005 Act requires pub­lic author­it­ies to con­sult per­sons appear­ing to them to have an interest in the devel­op­ment of their Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan. The Park Author­ity con­duc­ted a six week pub­lic con­sulta­tion between 25 Janu­ary and 7 March 2024 via an online sur­vey (avail­able in both Gael­ic and Eng­lish). Phone, paper and email sub­mis­sion options were also provided. The con­sulta­tion was pro­moted extens­ively both on and off­line across a range of chan­nels. This included a bilin­gual media release and con­sulta­tion land­ing page on our web­site, plus work­ing with social media influ­en­cer Som­hairle to pro­duce tailored Ins­tagram and Tik­Tok con­tent to engage a young­er audi­ence. We estim­ate that over 150 responses over­lapped with this activ­ity, and over 32,000 people watched the videos Som­hairle cre­ated. The con­sulta­tion was also shared with over 100 con­tacts with­in the new Gael­ic Officers Net­work, which has led to mul­tiple organ­isa­tion­al responses and lots of dir­ect email cor­res­pond­ence around poten­tial partnerships.

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1. A total of 427 responses were received, out of which 31 (7.3%) were in Gael­ic. This com­pares to 36 total responses sub­mit­ted to the pub­lic con­sulta­tion for the 2018 – 2022 Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan, and the around 250 people who con­trib­uted to the Nation­al Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan consultation.
2. A detailed sum­mary of the con­sulta­tion can be found in Annex 2, but key demo­graph­ic inform­a­tion was as fol­lows: a) On respond­ents’ con­nec­tions to the Nation­al Park, 31% said ​‘Loc­al res­id­ent’, 68% said ​‘Vis­it­or’, 6% said ​‘Busi­ness own­er or employ­ee’, 2% said ​‘Land man­ager or work­er’, 2% said ​‘Com­munity group mem­ber’, 2% said ​‘Staff / board mem­ber or Park Author­ity volun­teer’, 0.4% said ​‘Part­ner organ­isa­tion’, 2% said ​‘Prefer not to say’, and 7% said ​‘Oth­er’. (Please note, as people could select mul­tiple options, the total does not add up to 100%). b) There was a fairly even spread across the age ranges. 32% were aged 16 — 24, 23% aged 25 — 34, 11% aged 35 — 44, 13% aged 45 — 54, 12% aged 55 — 64, 8% aged 65 or over, and 1% ​‘Prefer not to say’. This sug­gests that a young­er demo­graph­ic than usu­al engaged with the con­sulta­tion. c) In terms of under­rep­res­en­ted com­munit­ies, 22% of respond­ents said they were liv­ing with a phys­ic­al or men­tal health con­di­tion or ill­ness; 26% con­sidered them­selves to be on a low income; 18% had caring respons­ib­il­it­ies; 1% iden­ti­fied as being from mixed or mul­tiple eth­nic groups (with 13% answer­ing ​‘oth­er’ to the eth­ni­city ques­tion); 10% iden­ti­fied as bi / bisexu­al and 11% as gay / les­bi­an; and 3% iden­ti­fied as a trans per­son. All these fig­ures are equal or high­er than the equi­val­ent per­cent­ages with­in the res­id­ent pop­u­la­tion of the Cairngorms.
3. 82% of respond­ents agreed or strongly agreed with the three stra­tegic pri­or­it­ies out­lined with­in the plan; 78% agreed or strongly agreed that the draft plan was easy to under­stand; and 76% agreed or strongly agreed that the plan ​‘helps safe­guard and pro­mote Gael­ic lan­guage and cul­ture’. The major­ity who did not agree did so because they do not believe organ­isa­tions such as the Park Author­ity should pri­or­it­ise Gael­ic in their day-to-day work.
4. The con­sulta­tion report – pro­duced by an inde­pend­ent third party, Ryan Dzi­ad­owiec includes a sum­mary of key find­ings (see Appendix 2, page 4), with the fol­low­ing key head­lines: a) Expo­nen­tial growth in engage­ment – a 1,086% increase in the num­ber of par­ti­cipants in the con­sulta­tion exer­cise from five years ago.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Paper 4 Form­al Board 28 June 2024 Page 5 of 7

b) Over­whelm­ing sup­port – bar­ring those who do not sup­port the devel­op­ment of Gael­ic Lan­guage Plans in gen­er­al, the plan received over­whelm­ing sup­port from all audi­ence cat­egor­ies. c) Interest in Gael­ic among res­id­ents and vis­it­ors alike – both demo­graph­ic groups showed major­ity sup­port for the Gael­ic lan­guage and there was a large increase in respond­ents who had at least a basic under­stand­ing of Gael­ic versus five years ago. d) Crit­ic­al tim­ing and chal­lenges – there is an urgent need for action giv­en the crit­ic­al state of the Gael­ic lan­guage across Scot­land and the Park Author­ity needs to play an act­ive role in tack­ling this.

Changes pro­posed as a res­ult of the consultation

1. The con­sulta­tion report makes a series of recom­mend­a­tions based on feed­back from par­ti­cipants. These are set out in table 1 below, along­side actions that we have taken to address them.

#	Recom­mend­a­tion	Action taken
1.	The major­ity of respond­ents agree with the stra­tegic pri­or­it­ies out­lined… It is recom­men­ded that these pri­or­it­ies remain unchanged.	Pri­or­it­ies have been retained from the draft Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan.
2.	It is recom­men­ded that the word­ing of some of the responses to the plan’s object­ives – the ​‘actions / tim­ing’ – are mod­i­fied to be more measurable.	All object­ives reviewed to ensure they are as SMART as prac­tic­able. Some will inev­it­ably less track­able giv­en the nature of this work, however.
3.	Going bey­ond Gael­ic as a lan­guage to con­sider its wider cul­tur­al impact and res­on­ance… It is recom­men­ded that the actions pro­posed for the object­ive of ​‘Pro­mot­ing a pos­it­ive image of Gael­ic’ are strengthened.	Great­er emphas­is placed on Gael­ic cul­ture / her­it­age with­in mul­tiple object­ives, includ­ing deliv­ery of key mater­i­als, e.g. Gael­ic place names trails, inter­pret­a­tion mater­i­als etc.
4.	It is recom­men­ded that the Park Author­ity sets up a frame­work through which inter­ested com­munity groups and indi­vidu­als could coordin­ate their efforts	We will include Gael­ic in the devel­op­ment of a new cul­tur­al her­it­age net­work for the Nation­al Park to sup­port and engage with inter­ested parties.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Paper 4 Form­al Board 28 June 2024 Page 6 of 7

	and revital­ise com­munity Gael­ic classes and events.
5.	It is recom­men­ded that the Park Author­ity form­ally or inform­ally sup­ports the setup of com­munity Gael­ic classes for adults in the Nation­al Park area.	We have added Gael­ic lan­guage and cul­ture train­ing (already ear­marked for part­ners and staff) for key com­munity rep­res­ent­at­ives as part of the cul­tur­al her­it­age net­work and / or com­munity coun­cil gatherings.
6.	It is recom­men­ded that the Park Author­ity reviews the job require­ments for at least one of its pos­i­tions to being a Gael­ic-essen­tial job and encour­ages more exist­ing staff to achieve a con­ver­sa­tion­al level of Gael­ic ability.	An annu­al Gael­ic lan­guage intern will be a Gael­ic essen­tial job and more exist­ing staff will be encour­aged to take part in our annu­al Gael­ic lan­guage training.

Stra­tegic risk man­age­ment This plan relates to our stra­tegic risk register as fol­lows: a) Num­ber 11 – it is a stat­utory require­ment to pro­duce a Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan every five years, so the pub­lic­a­tion of this plan reduces the risk of repu­ta­tion­al dam­age as a res­ult of not ful­filling our oblig­a­tions in this area. b) Num­ber 5 – a small aspect of deliv­ery relies on the recruit­ment of Gael­ic interns and, with only around 2% of Nation­al Park res­id­ents being flu­ent in the lan­guage, there is a risk that this role may be dif­fi­cult to fill. How­ever, we have man­aged to fill this role in the past, have a strong net­work to draw upon to help pro­mote oppor­tun­it­ies, and have a fall­back option of hir­ing a con­sult­ant to deliv­er this work for us if required.

Implic­a­tions The deliv­ery of this plan will have the fol­low­ing resource / comms implic­a­tions: a) An annu­al budget of £5,000 has been alloc­ated to deliv­er the plan over a five- year peri­od (i.e. £25,000 in total). This will largely be spent on train­ing and devel­op­ment, mater­i­als cre­ation (leaf­lets, sig­nage etc) and staff resource. b) The imple­ment­a­tion of this plan will not require addi­tion­al staff – bar­ring the agreed recruit­ment of a Gael­ic lan­guage intern for a four to six month peri­od – how­ever, it will require the equi­val­ent of c. 0.1 FTE per annum across the com­mu­nic­a­tions and engage­ment team.

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c) The deliv­ery of our Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan is a stat­utory com­mit­ment and cru­cial in deliv­er­ing on our Part­ner­ship Plan aspir­a­tions around lan­guage and cul­ture (spe­cific­ally object­ive B8 – Gael­ic lan­guage and culture).

Suc­cess meas­ures In the Part­ner­ship Plan (object­ive B8) we stated that the tar­gets for this piece of work were that ​‘an increased num­ber of indi­vidu­als and com­munit­ies engage with Gael­ic lan­guage and cul­ture’. Actions included every pub­lic body with an interest in the Nation­al Park imple­ment­ing their Gael­ic Lan­guage Plans in full, and devel­op­ing a suite of sup­port tools for Gael­ic, in col­lab­or­a­tion with loc­al busi­nesses and com­munity / cul­tur­al groups. Bòrd na Gàidh­lig require all pub­lic bod­ies to pro­duce an annu­al pro­gress report, out­lining steps taken in deliv­er­ing the five-year Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan. These reports are pub­lished on our web­site and will be cir­cu­lated to board mem­bers on an annu­al basis.

Sup­port­ing inform­a­tion a) Annex 1 — updated Cairngorms Nation­al Park Gael­ic Lan­guage Plan 2024 — 28. b) Annex 2 — con­sulta­tion report cov­er­ing the six week engage­ment process.