17 members’ NEWS - growth CONTD.
The Circle marks period of growth by becoming Living Wage employer Local social enterprise The Circle has seen an exciting time of growth recently. They’ve welcomed new staff members by growing their team to 12 and recently become a fully accredited Living Wage employer. The Circle is now part of the Living Wage Foundation and Dundee City Council’s campaign to make Dundee a Living Wage city. The Circle’s newest staff members include Sekai Machache, who joined their Marketing and Communications department and Kara Swankie who has been developing their exciting new initiative The Circle Academy. The Circle Academy is a practical education and training programme for people interested in starting up organisations with a More Than Profit approach. It will be run by Kara and the rest of The Circle team. They are looking to expand this project across Scotland in the future. Another new edition is Ruth Finnan in the role of Financial Controller, working closely with the CEO Kirsty Thomson and The Circle Manager Paul Hastie to deliver the financial strategy of the business. They have also recently employed Stephen McLennan and Caitlin Collins who will both be running an inspiring new venture, The Circle Café.
Stephen, Caitlin and a group of young people with experience in care who will be employed through the CJS initiative by SCVO.
The Circle Café is an employability and training programme for looked after young people and care leavers. It will be run by
Please read more about The Circle’s new staff members and initiatives through the staff profiles on their website at: https://thecircledundee.org.uk/blog/’
Rural Leaders travel to the Netherlands for ‘innovation safari’ Rural Leaders from Scottish Enterprise recently visited the Netherlands with a Rural Youth Project delegation from across Scotland to embark on an “Innovation Safari” exploring rural-urban relationships. The many visits featured agri-tourism, hospitality, food producers, innovators, community supported agriculture, HAS University and the world’s first floating farm. Jeremy Parker of NFU Mutual’s Forfar Agency shares some key themes from the trip.
Food and the growth of the City
A culture of innovation, collaboration and entrepreneurship
“The Netherlands can be viewed as a city of 17m people with co-ordinated spatial planning across provinces. Land use around and within the city should contribute to the health and wellbeing of its inhabitants. The concept of Urban Farming brings production closer to consumption and includes the use of redundant industrial buildings, brownfield sites, green corridors and vertical farms.”
“New thinking and new models are just as important as technical innovation. Increasingly businesses are finding their growth opportunities away from the current mainstream and within an expanding “sea of niches.” Hubs and clustering encourage collaboration.”
Social impact & community engagement “This was important for most of the businesses that we visited and it is proudly regarded as a measure of business success and growth. One farm operated in partnership with the local health authority to put 80 people at a time through a six-week programme, as part of their treatment for addictions or mental health issues whilst still operating as a commercial farm for fruit, vegetables and egg production.”
Circular Economy & sustainability “There’s an acceptance of the need to work with the sustainability agenda and resultant changes in consumption behaviours. Kipster Farm’s poultry feed used “residual flows” from large bakeries, reducing their carbon footprint by 50%. Even municipal verge cuttings don’t have to be waste. Cut-and-collect machinery sends grass feedstock to Anaerobic Digestion plants for gas or electricity production, both reducing the net public cost of trimming and reducing the land taken out of food production for this purpose. Koppert Cress has seven hectares of glasshouses, but sustainability objectives mean that, as they develop faraway markets, they look to establish local glasshouses to keep use of airfreight to a minimum.”
DACC • CONNECTED | SUMMER 2019
