Research and Thinking

Community Led Tourism

Community Enterprise, in partnership with One Planet Consulting, undertook a scoping study of community-led tourism in Scotland, on behalf of SENScot. This piece of work gathers a mix of examples of Community Led Tourism projects to illustrate the breadth and diversity of this offer and to explore common themes.

The study is cognisant of the current policy landscape and trends, gives an overview of the variety of organisations and their impacts.

East Ayrshire Resilience

In 2022 Community Enterprise supported a consortia of East Ayrshire community anchor organisations, funded by the CORRA Foundation and Scottish Government, to come together to identify the impact of the pandemic on people in their communities and identify the best way to support people to recover and thrive. This incredible piece of research was created by undertaking face to face surveys, conducted by specially trained local volunteers and staff in the partner organisations. They achieved incredible results, with over 6000 comments from over 2000 respondents.

The Range, Nature and Applicability of Funding Models to Support Community Land Ownership

Community Enterprise worked with Duncan MacPherson and Faye Macleod on this research commissioned by the Scottish Land Commission (SLC) to identify, explore and consider the implications of emerging sources of finance that are complementary to the Scottish Land Fund (SLF) for the purchase of community assets. The study built on previous work and looked at the strategic use, alignment and leverage of other finance sources of capital funding (including natural capital and green finance), and what the implications are for communities, government and the Scottish Land Fund.

Big Lottery Asset Ownership Research

The Big Lottery in Scotland commissioned ourselves and the Scottish Community Development Centre to undertake a piece of national research to review the efficacy of the Fund’s investment in community asset ownership and development.  The fund has made a political decision to fund asset ownership based on the assumption that this model will empower communities and release greater impact.  This research was aimed at testing this hypothesis with community organisations across Scotland over a 10 year period.  These ranged from rural to urban, and areas of high and low relative deprivation.  We undertook a national survey, stakeholder interviews, detailed case studies, an in-depth financial audit and a co-enquiry event.

Social Prescribing

We worked with the Scottish Community Development Centre on the research and thinking period for the Social Prescribing Project across Scotland and the North of Ireland.  This has allowed us to secure in-depth knowledge about community led health and social prescribing from literature review to primary research indicating how it will work in reality. 

We worked with the client to design a bespoke and highly complex impact assessment tool involving the patient, the referring health professional and the community support provider.  That system was embedded within a £250,000 piece of software that will track change to individuals and savings to the NHS over time which will be a tool to stimulate systems change.

Different Approach to Community Led Asset Development

This research paper is a response to recent changes in community asset development and the challenges faced by community organisations in establishing sustainable and effective assets.  In partnership with the William Grant Foundation, we researched and scoped out new models of innovative approaches to achieve these goals. Over a 6 month period we undertook a range of stakeholder interviews and case studies across Scotland and the UK and engaged with over 50 key national stakeholders at a summit event to discuss the issue.  This was a well received piece of work which was acknowledged as showing a direction of travel for a sector facing challenges.  The report can be viewed at this link.