Join to investigate and develop fresh ideas, help make the local economy more sustainable and develop projects which progress the aims of Sustaining Dunbar to develop a more resilient, self sufficient, low carbon community and economy.

We are currently researching some ideas and hope to gather like minded individuals together to take actions which will benefit current and future businesses in the area. We plan to form more links with other local organisations and to form a network to enable communication and sharing between the various enterprise initiatives already started or being planned by Sustaining Dunbar’s working groups.

Some ideas currently under investigation are:

• The prospect of starting a market in Dunbar town centre to provide local shops and small craft and food producers with a regular novel event in which to make sales, attract more visitors to the high street and provide a stepping stone for the growth of smaller ventures. (What do you think?)
• Create stronger links with the Dunbar Harbour Trust to support their important developments of the harbour area and make suggestions for possible uses of the Battery and Lamer Island after its upcoming renovation. (Any ideas/suggestions)
• To possibly develop business incubation units in Dunbar to help increased SME formation, growth, survival and create more local jobs in the future. (What do you think? where could this be located? Do you have any spare office space?)

Please feel free to get in touch. Join Sustaining Dunbar or E-mail me at sdenterprisegroup@gmail.com and contribute what ever you can. Tell us what you think of these initial ideas and/or get involved and bring your own insights and ideas.

Russell C.

For inspiration, take a look at the example of Green Valley Grocers

Your help is needed to make this a reality, please do come along to offer your support.

The five Dragons representing Community Windpower Ltd (BeGreen’s funders), British Energy, Lafarge, Sustaining Dunbar and Dunbar Grammar School were blown away by the quality of the presentations. Nigel Blair manager of Lafarge said “The students have shown great enthusiasm for the competition and the standard of the pitches to the Dragon’s was excellent. It was very difficult to make a decision and all of the students should be very proud of the work that they have completed”.

Project funding totalling £12,500 was split between three projects. £5,000 went to the Lauderdale team which will enable them to deliver their starter packs through the grammar and primary schools and £7,500 will be shared by the Cromwell and Castle teams who share similar project ideas. Both teams will  work together to develop their community farm / allotment project at the school .Winterfield and Victoria teams each won fifty house points for best presentation and best researched projects respectively. A further £2,500 will be used as prize monies for the winning teams.

“Philip Revell of Sustaining Dunbar was similarly impressed with the students’ enthusiasm, the quality of the pitches and their ability to think on their feet to answer questions and stated that “Sustaining Dunbar will look forward to assisting the winning teams to work up their project plans and make them a reality”.

Head teacher of Dunbar Grammar School Paul Raffaelli announced “I was immensely proud of my pupils and felt that I could ask the teams anything about their projects as did the other Dragons.  This made the experience very real for me and the young people.  This was a very good example of the ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ in action”.

Ray Ball, Finance Director of Community Windpower Ltd echoed Mr Raffaelli’s comments. “I was extremely impressed by the pupils.  They were all very confident in their respective projects and the quality of the presentations and detail provided made the Dragon’s job of choosing the best scheme extremely difficult.  There are some budding entrepreneurs within Dunbar Grammar School. It was a pleasure to be involved.  Good luck to the teams with their project delivery .It would be good to come back in the future to see how the projects worked”.

Paul Winkle, Station Director at Torness Power Station said: “The competition was a fantastic opportunity to teach young children how different forms of energy are sourced and generated, and it encourages them to look at the environment in which they live, in a different way.   The children were extremely enthusiastic and I hope they can encourage the community reduce its carbon footprint. I am delighted to have been part of the competition.”

Have your say about the past, present and future!

The 2025 M.A.P Project team are making maps to record the past, the present and your ideas about the future regarding access to local food, public transport and paths, local employment, home energy efficiency etc.  So far 600+ local people through out ward 7 have shared and mapped their knowledge and ideas. The summary reports are available on this website by area.

Examples of our mapping projects: Food Mapping

We did a drop in food mapping event in an unused shop on the High Street over two weeks leading up to the local food gathering. At the drop in people could map their knowledge about where we got our food in the past (i.e through the Dig for Victory years), where they get their food now and where they would like to get their food in the future. We used a separate map for each topic (past, present, future). We used post-it notes to enable people to record and map their knowledge and ideas.

We also used an H-Form which is a tool designed to enable people to self evaluate “How much of the food you eat is locally produced?”. With this tool they could give themselves a score between 0 (no local food eaten) and 10 (all food eaten is local). More important than these scores are people’s reasons for their scores which they record themselves onto post-its. We asked them to also record their ideas for making it easier for them to access locally produced/ grown food and to map where (onto the future maps).

We also mapped local knowledge and ideas regarding Public Transport, Paths, Local employment, home energy efficiency and skills

Because we know that only a small proportion of the population dropped into the Map Hub (we tracked by age and gender and area) or come to meetings – we recruited local people from each of the settlement areas in our Ward and trained them in Community Mapping techniques to carry out a wide spread survey (as above but getting out to where people live/ work/ schools etc). 20+ local facilitators where trained by me in mapping and h-forms and they where paid to carry out the survey work in and around where they live.

At this point 600+ people of all ages and areas have had their say.

We are now looking to study the 1940s Farm Survey Maps at the National Archives to map more about the past. We are also getting out and about doing farm visits and mapping past, present and future. We will be interviewing more local key elderly people to continue to map details about the past.

Once we have consolidated all the map survey outputs then we will continue to publish them on the website. You can find summary reports for all areas now e.g. http://www.sustainingdunbar.org/2010/03/26/dunbar-central-2025-m-a-p-project/ If you go under categories you will be able to see all reports by area as they are done.

If you are interested in  training in Community Mapping and Action Planning and we could come your way to train up local people to do as we are doing. Call Susan Guy to discuss 01368 866 920.

We will be sharing our researches and continuing our discussions about local currencies and financial structures

All welcome to come and join the discussion, see moneylinks for some relevant links of interest.

We will be showing the film ‘Money as Debt’  (http://moneyasdebt.net/) , discussing the role that our current money system plays in trapping us in an unsustainable economic system, the potential for launching a Dunbar Pound and for setting up  a local bank/credit union. All Welcome.

We currently have 26 volunteer facilitators knocking on doors around the Dunbar and East Linton area, carrying out a survey regarding local: food, energy, transport and employment -potentially interviewing up to 1000 local people. You are invited to their report back session at 3pm on Thursday 28th January at Hallhill HealthyLiving Centre. All Welcome.

We will be holding further report back sessions as part of a series of ‘2025 roadshows’ around the area in the coming weeks -watch this space.

Some of you will already be aware that ‘Berwick Garden Centre’ have submitted an application to construct a huge ‘Garden Centre and Restaurant’ on the Spott Road, just north of Asda. In actual fact it is much more than this; it is effectively a retail park and would also include a pet shop, gift shop, farmshop, florist, outdoor clothing store and more.
You can look at the application details online here:

http://www.planning.eastlothian.gov.uk/WAM/pas/showCaseFile.do?councilName=East+Lothian+Council&appNumber=09%2F00971%2FP

(I found that I needed to use Firefox rather than Internet Explorer to be able to download the relevant documents)
 
Why object?
1. This development would be in direct competition with many existing shops on Dunbar High Street, including all the food shops, the gift shops, the pet shop, the florists, the new outdoor clothing shop and all those shops already selling garden supplies. It would very likely put several shops out of business and the knock-on effect would compromise the viability of all remaining shops.  In short, it would be disastrous!
It would also take trade away from Smeaton Garden Centre and Stenhouse Plants in East Linton as well as from Knowes Farm.
2. It would be in contravention of all planning policies on edge of town retail development.
3. It would be in contravention of the Council’s own Local Plan which was only adopted in October 2008 and which allocated this land for future employment use.
4. Its business model is totally dependent on the car.  It envisages 96,000 car arrivals per year, with more than 30% of these journeys being from further than a 20minute drive time. This is not a model suitable for a low carbon future!
 
Please send letters of objection to each of our Councillors and to the Head of Planning, Peter Collins:
Cllr. Paul McLennan, John Muir House, Brewery Park, Haddington EH41 3HA or pmclennan@eastlothian.gov.uk
Cllr. Jacquie Bell, Braeside, 2 High Street, Belhaven, Dunbar, EH42 1NP  or jbell@eastlothian.gov.uk
Cllr. Norman Hampshire, Town House, Haddington, EH41 4DA or nhampshire@eastlothian.gov.uk
Head of Planning: Peter Collins, Director of Environment, John Muir House, Brewery Park, Haddington, EH41 3HA or environment@eastlothian.gov.uk

We are over half way there!

• Management Committee formed to drive forward the bakery project
• Bakery scheduled to reopen before Easter 2010
• £17,600 raised from share subscriptions – 50% of the target
• £26,000 pledged in interest-free loans and grants
• More grant and loan applications in the pipeline
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