Project Skyline invites you to imagine the valleys of Wales - "hundreds of hectares for hundreds of years"
The network established by the latest CTRLShift just keeps on reverberating… Here’s a lovely example of how communities and localities can begin to super-empower themselves. From Wales, here’s Project Skyline - with the brililant hashtag #imagineyourvalley.
See blurb below:
Project Skyline is a feasibility study that is looking at the possibility of communities managing the landscape that surrounds their town or village.
What would happen if we handed to local people the means to shape their own environment? Not the current piecemeal approach, a small patch of woodland for a few years, but hundreds of hectares for hundreds of years - to the “skyline”.
What might a community choose to do with the land if it could plan not for the three years of a Lottery grant but for three generations? Create jobs from forestry? Support small-holdings or food projects? Improve public access? Support wildlife? Or a combination of ideas and more besides.
Project Skyline is seeking to answer these questions. We will be working with three communities in the Valleys - Treherbert, Ynysowen, and Caerau - as well as all of the key stakeholders such as NRW, and the Local Authority, to understand whether and how land that is currently publicly managed could be managed by a local community.
The most important work will be working with communities to explore what it might mean and to understand the risks and opportunities. The feasibility project will be seeking to answer some of the following questions:
What is the best way to govern a community land project? How do you ensure inclusivity and fairness? What is the experience from Scotland and elsewhere in Europe?
Are there sustainable business models that will mean that the community is not reliant on continual grant income? What are the capital and skills requirements to develop the ideas that have been developed by the community?
What is the environmental impact of any change in land use? How can we ensure that we improve and don’t further damage the landscape?
What are the legal implications of the transfer of management responsibility?
But all of this work is driven by the vision that the community will develop for their landscape – their plans and visions for the next 5 years and the next 100 years!
The project centres round three Welsh valleys - Treherbert, Caerau, Ynysowen - and is about to commence “working with these three communities… as well as all of the key stakeholders such as NRW, and the Local Authority, to understand whether and how land that is currently publicly managed could be managed by a local community.”
Lunch at the Treherbert Festival of Ideas