As part of Scotland’s Towns Week, Scotland's Towns Partnership  is hosting Scotland’s Towns Conference on 7^th November.  Now in its 5^th year, it is the gathering for everyone with an interest in Scotland’s towns and high streets.

As part of its Regeneration Strategy, the Scottish Government is undertaking a Town Centre Review, to spearhead action on the future for Scotland's town centres; the Review Group meet in September to begin to put in place a process at a national level to develop and support ideas for local action.  Timed to capture feedback from this meeting, our conference aims to create new stories for Scotland’s towns.

We will look at how we make a cultural change in understanding what the high street could be - beyond just retail; how we create a 'framework for mess' - a model which allows different people the freedom to do things; creating the conditions for locally driven solutions and recognising, and positively encouraging, different solutions in different town centres. We need to make people think about the high street as social spaces for all segments of society and to understand how and why people participate in places. The high street as a social space needs to go beyond tidiness.

Join us on 7th November, and create new stories for Scotland's towns.

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Programme

09:00 Breakfast & Street Exhibition - Shopping for Ideas that Work

Part 1: The town story so far...

10:00 Chair's Welcome - Ross Martin, Policy Director, Centre for Scottish Public Policy & Board Member, Scotland's Towns Partnership

10:15 Ministerial Opening Address - Derek Mackay MSP, Minister for Local Government and Planning, Scottish Government 

10:30 Local Solutions for Local Change - Daniel McKendry, Principal Regeneration Officer, East Renfrewshire Council 

10:45 Towns Review Update, Pecha Kucha style. Following the recent initial gathering of the Towns Review Group, we hear short provocations from participants sharing their feedback & views from a social, cultural and enterprise perspective.

Part 2: Tough Talk - agreeing, together, today, the key ingredients for successful towns...

11:00 Creating our Framework for Mess! Robert Rae, change scenario planning expert & founding Director of 3rd Horizons leads this Futures Session with the entire audience, to reach agreement on 10 key ingredients (facilities, services, assets) that will create new stories for our towns. 

12:00 Lunch & Street Exhibition - Shopping for Ideas that Work

13:00 Fringe Events: The Big Lottery Fund , Local Data Company, Employment Enterprise

13:45  Fringe wrap up and head back to the hall. 

Part 3: The Talking Stops Now!   Implementing Alternative Futures

14:00   Pledge your allegiance to Scotland’s towns! Ross Martin    

14:10  How you implement alternative futures. An Open Space session with Diarmaid Lawlor, Head of Urbanism, Architecture + Design Scotland. We've agreed on 10 key ingredients. Now we're going to agree on 10 things we need to do to implement alternative futures.

"What is an Open Space Session?" - It's a quick way to enable all kinds of people & organisations to input on a single theme, working in parallel groups in one big space. At each table, for a few minutes at a time, you'll work in pairs, then fours, then the whole table, then the whole room.

14:40 Civic economy expert, Joost Beunderman of Architecture 00 & Author, Compendium for the Civic Economy, on Putting in Place the Conditions to Scale it up 

15:00 Chris Wade, Chief Executive, Action for Market Towns – How to measure it all, so you make it credible – with examples from Wales. 

15:20 Quickfire Question Time & Round Up with Diarmaid, Joost & Chris

Led by Ross Martin 

16:00 – 16:30 Street Party. Don’t forget to hand in your pledge cards!