Three of my favourite town centre regeneration projects tick all the right boxes as successful examples of the art of asset-based development.
The Number 8 Community Arts Centre, Pershore; The Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal and Galeri Caernarfon are all iconic buildings that earn their keep within their towns; all are community-owned and managed; all provide a great service that helps bring a place to life -and all serve a great cup of coffee!
It was great to see one of my favourite town centre-based community enterprises announced this week as one of 12 worthy beneficiaries of the expansion of the Architectural Heritage Fund’s Heritage Development Trusts model.
Varied examples
The art of asset-based development can of course involve services other than community arts. What asset-based development schemes have in common is that they nearly always involve property as a base for providing a paid for local service. Sometimes ‘intellectual assets’ such as an on-line service can be involved.
Other examples of successful asset-based development vary from managed work space like that run by our dear friends at Ballinasloe Enterprise Centre to a visitor centre and 750 acre countryside attraction that I helped set-up at Stanwick Lakes in Northamptonshire.
Ballinasloe Area Community Development (BACD) is this year BACD is celebrating 25 years of work combining enterprise & community development through a long-term commitment, and his milestone was marked by the opening of the Ballinasloe Enterprise Hub in the heart of the town centre. The Enterprise Hub is a €1.6 million project that has had cross-department support from the Irish Government’s Department of Environment, Climate and Communications, and Department of Rural and Community Development.
Success factors
Asset-based development is a long-term commitment that can bring lasting rewards. There is though always a fine balance between asset-based development and liability-based failurer! Key factors for getting the balance right to create and run successful community assets include:
- Creating capacity: Building the community capacity and piloting a potentially self-finacing service.
- Widening the benefits: Balancing and distinguishing the challenges of running a profitable business, providing a community service, focusing on any wider strategic regeneration objectives including benefitting from and adding to local footfall.
- Acquiring the asset: Successful fundraising and negotiations to buy or transfer the ownership of the asset, including any necessary restoration or conversion work to an appropriate standard.
- Running the enterprise: Operating a successful business/service within the asset that generates a surplus after on-going running costs and long-term maintenance have been covered.
Further guidance
The art of asset-based development is an approach with the potential to being a growing to part of revitalising our local economies and communities through enterprise, service delivery and wider engagement. It is an approach advocated as part of the recently published Locality Manifesto on building thriving neighbourhoods as something that can be practical and achievable in different types of places including those in and around our town and city centres. Similarly, Power for Change’s community-powered high streets report provides is a well-crafted and timely lobbying document aimed at influencing party manifestos and the policies of the “next government”. In parallel the Community Ownership Commission assessed how the benefits of community ownership might spread to more communities. Its report, unleasheasing community ownership provides a blueprint for creating the environment for community ownership to thrive.
Walk the talk
These topical reports from amongst our “recommended reads” are a great place to extend your knowledge of the place of the art of asset-based development in a wider revitalisation. If you’d like to begin by getting a greater sense of why I have such a soft spot for the work of BACD, I invite you to ‘walk the talk’ and watch my short video about being “back in Ballinasloe“.
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