Cairngorms Nation­al Park

Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

EXPLOR­ING THE POTEN­TIAL FOR ESTAB­LISH­ING A CUL­TUR­AL HER­IT­AGE NET­WORK FOR THE CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK PRE­PAR­AT­ORY WORK APPENDICES

SCOTO Scot­tish Tour­ism Scot­tish Com­munity Tour­ism Net­work CIC

May 2024

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1: Online Sur­vey Tem­plate 1

2: Use­ful Con­sid­er­a­tions FOR Estab­lish­ing a FULLY RESOURCED Cul­tur­al Her­it­age Net­work for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park 1

• Pur­pose 1
• Scale 1
• Gov­ernance and Fin­ance 2
• Struc­tures 3
• Oper­a­tion 4
• Resource 5
• Budget Require­ments 5
• Mar­ket­ing and Aware­ness Rais­ing. 6
• A Com­munity For­um for Cairngorms Nation­al Park? 6
• Cul­tur­al Her­it­age and Tour­ism 7

3: Poten­tial Interest in Host­ing a new Cul­tur­al Her­it­age Net­work in Cairngorms Nation­al Park 8

• Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship 8
• The Cairngorms Trust 9
• Key Con­sid­er­a­tions 9

APPEN­DICES

1: ONLINE SUR­VEY TEMPLATE

See sep­ar­ate PDF document.

2: USE­FUL CON­SID­ER­A­TIONS FOR ESTAB­LISH­ING A FULLY RESOURCED CUL­TUR­AL HER­IT­AGE NET­WORK FOR THE CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK

There are sev­er­al import­ant con­sid­er­a­tions to be worked through if the decisions is taken to estab­lish a new cul­tur­al her­it­age net­work, which are itemised below. There is con­sid­er­able over­lap and implic­a­tions from one to anoth­er but these have been set out indi­vidu­ally to hope­fully con­vey why each needs to be considered.

Pur­pose

Sig­ni­fic­ant feed­back provided via the sur­vey and sub­sequent meet­ings was that there was a pre­con­ceived assump­tion that a net­work would be for asset man­agers and activ­ity pro­viders – those engaged in cul­tur­al her­it­age activ­ity, rather than those liv­ing and work­ing with­in the Park keen to hold on to their loc­al way of life – to pre­serve it and record it. There can be ten­sions between these.

This ten­sion begs a ques­tion that does need answered on what the pur­pose of any net­work would be. Is it a mech­an­ism to help con­serve loc­al cul­tur­al her­it­age in its many forms, or is it to sup­port cul­tur­al her­it­age prac­ti­tion­ers do what they are doing better?

Clearly it could ful­fil both but this would need to be expli­cit and activ­ity struc­tured accordingly.

Scale

A ques­tion with­in the sur­vey and which was teased out with­in the con­ver­sa­tions and inter­views, was the scale of net­work­ing that would be wel­comed. There was

clear interest in a Park­wide annu­al con­fer­ence type of event but a resource would be needed to make this hap­pen. This would cov­er ven­ue costs, cater­ing, speak­er fees etc but also giv­en the level of volun­teers involved in this sec­tor and the scale of the Park, poten­tially bursary sup­port for attendance.

There was not­able interest in more loc­al net­work­ing reflect­ing the respond­ents own scale of oper­a­tion – and also reflect­ing the dif­fer­ence in the cul­tur­al her­it­age of dif­fer­ent areas of the Park.

A pos­sible mod­el could there­fore be to have a Park wide annu­al face to face gath­er­ing in say Feb­ru­ary and in autumn more loc­al face to face net­work­ing events – and both of which sup­por­ted by online gath­er­ing events in between. A sug­ges­ted basis for the more loc­al ​‘sub’ net­works could be:

• Badenoch & Strathspey
• Tomin­toul & Glenlivet
• Roy­al Deeside and Don Valley
• High­land Perth­shire and the Angus Glens

There could be link ups with the stra­tegic pro­jects and their par­ent organ­isa­tions fun­ded to sup­port these sub net­works (Badenoch Her­it­age SCIO, Cat­er­an Eco­Mu­seum social enter­prise and Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Devel­op­ment Trust). This would revital­ise their purpose.

Gov­ernance and Finance

This also ties in with struc­tures. If a new leg­al entity is cre­ated it will require its own gov­ernance. Argu­ably this is an extra bur­den if the main bene­fit being sought is great­er col­lab­or­a­tions and shar­ing of ideas, know­ledge and pro­mo­tion. If a sep­ar­ate entity was to be con­sidered there are vari­ous mod­els to con­sider from mem­ber­ship cooper­at­ive, cooper­at­ives CIC (com­munity interest com­pany) and lim­ited com­pany to Char­it­able Trust and SCIO (Scot­tish Incor­por­ated Char­it­able Organ­isa­tion. Each of these is gov­erned by either Com­pan­ies House or OCSR and has annu­al report­ing and audit­ing requirements.

SCOTO itself was ini­tially set up as a cooper­at­ive and then with the bene­fit of hind­sight transitioned to become a cooper­at­ive CIC. Our exper­i­ence sug­gests that this type of col­lab­or­at­ive cul­tur­al her­it­age net­work does not need an oner­ous gov­ernance struc­ture, espe­cially in the early days and recom­mends a

simple con­sti­tu­tion is adop­ted that clearly sets out the pur­pose and mod­us operandi, roles and respons­ib­il­it­ies would be suf­fi­cient. As set out else­where this net­work could oper­ate through a par­ent organ­isa­tion with their bank­ing fin­an­cial sys­tems, pro­ced­ures and reporting.

Struc­tures

Cairngorms cur­rently has a num­ber of net­works – some long estab­lished and some more recent. Some of these are com­pletely inde­pend­ent of the Park Author­ity and oth­ers have been estab­lished by the Park Author­ity and/​or are act­ively sup­por­ted by the Park Author­ity. The Cairngorms Trust, Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship and what was the Asso­ci­ation of Cairngorms Com­munit­ies being key examples.

An import­ant con­sid­er­a­tion for any cul­tur­al her­it­age net­work is wheth­er it would see itself as an inde­pend­ent organisation/​structure with a voice and a lob­by­ing remit or more of a net­work to enable col­lab­or­a­tion (in sup­port of the Nation­al Park’s aims for example).

Of note, an inde­pend­ent organ­isa­tion would require its own struc­ture and gov­ernance – and fund­ing. The feed­back from the engage­ment activ­ity sug­gests an enabling struc­ture is more appro­pri­ate and also more deliv­er­able. Few were inter­ested in join­ing a steer­ing group (or needed to know what was involved first) and very few were willing/​able to pay a level of fee which would sup­port an inde­pend­ent organ­isa­tion. The key bene­fits people were seek­ing were net­work­ing and col­lab­or­at­ive activ­it­ies – joint fund­ing bids and pro­jects, shared know­ledge and train­ing etc.

There is evid­ence across Scot­land of cul­tur­al and/​or cre­at­ive net­works and for­ums being estab­lished — typ­ic­ally at a coun­cil level and with coun­cil resources for admin­is­tra­tion and devel­op­ment. How­ever, as soon as this resource – in effect, the glue – is reduced/​removed a net­work typ­ic­ally col­lapses. There are sev­er­al examples of this such as Cre­at­ive Bor­ders. This a func­tion of vari­ous factors but the most import­ant being that the cul­tur­al her­it­age and cre­at­ive sec­tors are pre­dom­in­antly third sec­tor and many indi­vidu­als who engage do so as either volun­teers, as freel­an­cers or in a staff role which is tightly focused based on any fund­ing. Their time is very pre­cious for their own charity/​enterprise activ­ity and there­fore lim­ited in terms of driv­ing or admin­is­ter­ing any strategic

net­work or for­um if not paid or sup­por­ted to do so. Without a lead­er­ship and devel­op­ment resource and the glue to hold it all togeth­er there is lim­ited momentum can be achieved.

CBP, Cairngorms Trust and poten­tially any new Cairngorms Com­munity forum/​network are struc­tures which could host a cul­tur­al her­it­age net­work with suf­fi­cient resource made avail­able to do so, and also clear mes­saging and com­mu­nic­a­tions on the host­ing role.

Anoth­er non-Park-based entity could host a net­work on a sim­il­ar basis – the Her­it­age Trust Net­work or SCOTO CIC being examples. The same pro­viso would apply — suf­fi­cient resource is made avail­able for this to oper­ate effect­ively and not be a drain on the par­ent body’s core remit and activity.

In addi­tion, an exist­ing cul­tur­al her­it­age entity with­in the Park could host a net­work. This could be an attrac­tion, like one of the museums, or one of the her­it­age groups like Badenoch Her­it­age SCIO or Cat­er­an Eco­mu­seum. How­ever, as these organ­isa­tions are typ­ic­ally under­fun­ded to do their core activ­ity it will be essen­tial that they are resourced fully to under­take the host­ing and asso­ci­ated deliv­ery role and that this provides a bene­fit to them as an organ­isa­tion – there would have to be some­thing in it for them and not simply cov­er­ing outlays.

Oper­a­tion

Admin­is­trat­ive sup­port and a lead­er­ship and devel­op­ment­al role are essen­tial for any net­work gain­ing trac­tion and deliv­ery bene­fits to a net­work­ers. A net­work will have import­ant data­base man­age­ment tasks, com­mu­nic­a­tion func­tions, event plan­ning and deliv­ery and poten­tially man­age­ment of an online resources portal either oper­ated inde­pend­ently by a net­work or a ded­ic­ated space on anoth­er organisation’s digit­al plat­form (e.g. the Park Authority).

A coordin­at­or role which is more than basic admin­is­tra­tion is recom­men­ded where digit­al com­munity man­age­ment is part of their remit. The lead­er­ship and devel­op­ment­al activ­ity will focus on fund­ing oppor­tun­it­ies, pro­ject activ­ity and part­ner liaison.

Resource

A com­ment made sev­er­al times through the dis­cus­sions with indi­vidu­als and stake­hold­ers was that any net­work will need to be resourced and can’t be expec­ted to be self-sus­tain­ing as this sec­tor is dom­in­ated by third sec­tor and indi­vidu­al interests. This com­ment was often then fur­ther developed to say the Park Author­ity should fund this as the cur­rent Nation­al Park aims refer to con­serving the nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al her­it­age of the Park and clearly any net­work activ­ity (if prop­erly estab­lished) will enhance the con­ser­va­tion of cul­tur­al her­it­age through col­lab­or­a­tion, shared learn­ing, joint fund­ing bids and pro­jects plus promotion.

There is evid­ence from else­where of oth­er organ­isa­tions offer­ing addi­tion­al sup­port for net­works to under­take spe­cif­ic pro­jects and ini­ti­at­ives once a core com­mit­ment is made, and many wel­come the col­lab­or­at­ive foot­ing a net­work provides when con­sid­er­ing fund­ing pro­jects and programmes.

A key con­sid­er­a­tion is wheth­er to estab­lish a new organ­isa­tion or to sup­port an exist­ing organ­isa­tion which has robust gov­ernance and report­ing pro­cesses in place and resource them to facil­it­ate this net­work with ded­ic­ated admin­is­trat­ive and leadership/​development resources in place.

Budget Require­ments

Pre­sum­ing a net­work is not being estab­lished as a sep­ar­ate leg­al entity and it is hos­ted by anoth­er organ­isa­tion, a basic and effect­ive net­work could cost in the region of £35 – 40k per annum. This would cov­er a part time freel­ance coordinator/​digital com­munity man­ager, plus basic oper­a­tion­al costs. A freel­ance role is recom­men­ded cer­tainly in the early stages when the tim­ing of activ­ity will be unpre­dict­able and flex­ib­il­ity will be import­ant. They would oper­ate with their own IT and be able to set up secure new sys­tems on for example Google Drive. The devel­op­ment­al role would also be freel­ance. An allow­ance of c£5k is included for the host organ­isa­tion to cov­er asso­ci­ated costs. How­ever this is an estim­ate only and the detail would need to be scoped out more fully with the spe­cif­ic host in mind. Addi­tion­al budgets would be required for pro­jects and ini­ti­at­ives and any fund­ing pro­pos­als should incor­por­ate pro­ject man­age­ment costs.

The deliv­ery of an annu­al face to face con­fer­ence event would be c£10 – 15k to cov­er event plan­ning, ven­ue costs and cater­ing plus speak­er costs and travel. Addi­tion­al allow­ance for a travel bursary scheme is recom­men­ded. If a two day event is planned addi­tion­al accom­mod­a­tion costs need to be con­sidered and included in the bursary scheme.

These costs are indic­at­ive at this stage and based on SCOTO’s own exper­i­ence of run­ning their net­work and sta­ging 2 con­fer­ence events in 2023 and 2024.

Mar­ket­ing and Aware­ness Raising

A key aspect which has come out of the stra­tegic pro­ject inter­views and 1−2−1 qual­it­at­ive inter­views is the sense that the Cairngorms Cul­tur­al Her­it­age assets and exper­i­ences are not as well pro­moted as the out­door and nat­ur­al her­it­age assets and exper­i­ences. The three stra­tegic ini­ti­at­ives have created/​safeguarded cul­tur­al her­it­age assets and have gen­er­ated new exper­i­ences, facil­it­ies and ser­vices and also con­tent aimed at vis­it­ors and loc­als. Con­tinu­ing to pro­mote and raise aware­ness of this as a leg­acy to the fun­ded pro­jects would be warmly wel­comed and also help to bal­ance the focus of mar­ket­ing con­tent and cam­paigns. A net­work can task itself to devel­op and cur­ate more con­tent such as themed trails, event cal­en­dars etc.

CBP have indic­ated a keen interest in work­ing with this con­tent and with appro­pri­ate resources to do so, they can read­ily devel­op tar­geted cam­paign activity.

A Com­munity For­um for Cairngorms Nation­al Park?

His­tor­ic­ally the Nation­al Park had a form­ally con­sti­tuted Asso­ci­ation of Cairngorms Com­munit­ies (AoCC). This how­ever lost momentum par­tic­u­larly dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and at the time of writ­ing was being wound up. How­ever, espe­cially in light of major ini­ti­at­ives like the fmulti-mil­lion Cairngorms 2030 five year ini­ti­at­ive, a new com­munity based net­work of some descrip­tion could be intro­duced to sup­port com­munity engage­ment and involvement.

The busi­ness interests in the Park already have a well-estab­lished net­work — CBP which is the Park wide cham­ber of com­merce and Des­tin­a­tion Man­age­ment and Mar­ket­ing Organisation.

Cul­tur­al Her­it­age and Tourism

A Cul­tur­al Her­it­age Net­work can focus on two dif­fer­ent aspects — a cul­tur­al her­it­age net­work for loc­al interests that is focussed on cap­tur­ing and con­serving loc­al stor­ies of people and place, tra­di­tion­al skills and land man­age­ment prac­tices, loc­al beliefs and cus­toms, lan­guage, place names and land­scape fea­tures, shinty and high­land gath­er­ing activ­ity and/​or a net­work focussed on grow­ing tour­ism and devel­op­ing vis­it­or exper­i­ences based on the area’s out­stand­ing and fas­cin­at­ing cul­tur­al heritage.

These are not mutu­ally exclus­ive but can polar­ise interests and it is import­ant to strike a bal­ance and also dis­pel myths that por­tray tour­ism as a neg­at­ive activ­ity. Scot­land has had a tra­di­tion of loc­al his­tor­ic­al soci­et­ies that have helped pre­serve arte­facts, stor­ies and imagery, but unfor­tu­nately many of these are strug­gling to con­tin­ue with age­ing volun­teers and costs to store arte­facts and digit­ise con­tent – with a gen­er­al lack of interest and engage­ment from young­er res­id­ents. The vis­it­or facing activ­ity can help engage young­er people through the pro­vi­sion of jobs and freel­ance work and the use of technology.

There is there­fore an import­ant bal­ance to be struck between pre­serving the unique her­it­age and cul­ture of the Cairngorms – in effect what has made the place what it is today — and provid­ing authen­t­ic vis­it­or exper­i­ences which help con­serve the her­it­age and also gen­er­ate eco­nom­ic and oth­er benefits.

The bal­ance lies in ensur­ing vis­it­ors are much more aware of what is unique about the Park as a con­sequence of its cul­tur­al her­it­age and to provide oppor­tun­it­ies for vis­it­ors (and loc­als) to gain a deep­er under­stand­in of this and have respect for it. An import­ant con­sid­er­a­tion which is often mis­un­der­stood is that vis­it­ors can help sup­port loc­al com­munit­ies in con­serving and cel­eb­rat­ing their cul­tur­al her­it­age through the pro­vi­sion of book­able and care­fully cur­ated exper­i­ences and attrac­tions. Research by Vis­itScot­land and oth­ers has

demon­strated that more and more vis­it­ors are seek­ing out oppor­tun­it­ies to meet loc­als and exper­i­ence cul­tur­al her­it­age and that they will pay for these exper­i­ences, espe­cially where this is bespoke and not run of the mill.

This prin­ciple of vis­it­ors and the vis­it­or eco­nomy sup­port­ing loc­al com­munit­ies is at the heart of SCOTO’s own eth­os on loc­al­ism and com­munity led tourism.

3: POTEN­TIAL INTEREST IN HOST­ING A NEW CUL­TUR­AL HER­IT­AGE NET­WORK IN CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK

As it became evid­ent dur­ing the deliv­ery of this piece of work that an option could be for any future net­work to be hos­ted by an exist­ing body, rather than cre­ate a com­pletely new entity, SCOTO reached out Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship and the Cairngorms Trust. The dis­cus­sions are out­lined below.

Cairngorms Busi­ness Partnership

A con­struct­ive dis­cus­sion took place with the new CEO of the CBP wherein, sub­ject to appro­pri­ate resource being provided to enable the activ­ity, he expressed interest in sup­port­ing a new net­work, help­ing arrange an annu­al con­fer­ence and spe­cific­ally to sup­port with ongo­ing vis­it­or facing mar­ket­ing activ­ity giv­en CBP’s DMO remit (Des­tin­a­tion Marketing/​Management Organ­isa­tion). Ideas con­sidered were wheth­er an annu­al event could tie in with the annu­al CBP event and have session(s) ded­ic­ated to Cul­tur­al Heritage.

CBP could admin­is­ter a new net­work if resourced to do so but did recog­nise through dis­cus­sions with SCOTO, that the Cul­tur­al Her­it­age sec­tor­al interests may query why this role sat with the Cham­ber OF Commerce/​a busi­ness based organ­isa­tion when their interests are not­ably third sec­tor. This could be addressed with effect­ive com­mu­nic­a­tions but could be an ini­tial stum­bling block.

A point worth not­ing which came out in the 1−2−1 qual­it­at­ive inter­views was that CBP is seen as more focused on the west­ern area of the Park and not as act­ive as hoped in the east (where Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire also have a pres­ence and have recently done some effect­ive work with individuals/​businesses who were inter­viewed). This per­cep­tion could have a bear­ing on any pro­pos­al for CBP to host a net­work and bene­fit from some engage­ment activ­ity in the east.

The Cairngorms Trust

The Cairngorms Trust, like CBP has a pan Park remit and has, for example been the admin­is­trat­or for EU Lead­er funds and more recently the CLLD (Com­munity Led Loc­al Devel­op­ment) funds. It was ori­gin­ally set up as a LAG (Loc­al Action Group) for the EU Lead­er fund­ing and was admin­istered by CNPA. How­ever with changes in this fund­ing on the hori­zon and also con­cerns expressed about the close work­ing with CNPA, the LAG opted to estab­lish itself as an inde­pend­ent char­it­able organ­isa­tion, and to admin­is­ter oth­er funds and projects.

The Trust could sim­il­arly facil­it­ate a new cul­tur­al her­it­age net­work but again will need resource to do so as this isn’t their core remit. Fur­ther, as this is not some­thing that the Trust have con­sidered, and they are cur­rently explor­ing oth­er areas of activ­ity and new trust­ees, they have stated they could not com­mit to any­thing without more detail and a full board dis­cus­sion. The Trust do recog­nise the import­ance of the Park’s cul­tur­al her­it­age and that this should be sup­por­ted at a grass roots level.

Key Con­sid­er­a­tions

Both organ­isa­tions are there­fore poten­tial hosts of a Cul­tur­al Her­it­age Net­work should this be pro­gressed but spe­cif­ics would need to be explored in much more detail. There could also be oth­er organ­isa­tions will­ing to take on this role if adequate fund­ing is available.

The dis­tinct advant­age in this type of approach is min­im­ising ded­ic­ated set up costs and organ­isa­tion­al gov­ernance if the primary pur­pose of a net­work is to aid col­lab­or­a­tion rather than be to have an inde­pend­ent voice. How­ever, com­mu­nic­a­tions will be vital as both organ­isa­tions set out here have a spe­cif­ic remit which may at first appear as at odds with a cul­tur­al her­it­age net­work. The role of them being a host will need explained and also a net­work should have its own steer­ing group/​committee and report­ing processes.