Putting our town centre stage – report on our 2020 Annual Gathering & AGM

In October 2020, we continued the conversation we started at our Kirkcaldy After Lockdown event in July, at our 2020 Annual Gathering & AGM – ‘Putting our town centre stage’. The event focused on towns – why they’re so important, and how we can put our town centre stage.

Due to Covid-19 restrictions, we held our 2020 Annual Gathering online for the first time. 45 people joined us on Zoom. Chair of our Board, Christine, welcomed everyone, gave an excellent update on our activities and achievements since April 2019 and outlined some of our future plans. Read our Annual Report 2019 – 20 for more information.

We then had two brilliant speakers:

Cara Forrester from Love Oor Lang Toun. Love Oor Lang Toun is a collective of local people who want to create a 21^st century town centre people will be proud of and want to spend time in. Working in Kirkcaldy since March this year, they’ve already carried out a range of projects to support, develop and promote the town centre. Cara spoke about what they’ve done so far, and what they have planned coming up. Find out more on their website or Facebook page.

Phil Prentice, Chief Officer of Scotland’s Town Partnership and National Programme Director of Scotland’s Improvement Districts. With 25 years’ economic development experience across the public and private sectors, Phil’s role as Chief Officer is to drive sustainable change through collaboration and partnership. Phil spoke about why towns are so important, resilience, recovery and renewal, why climate change is going to be a massive driver in town centre regeneration, how and why communities need to be more involved, and STP’s national town centre recovery campaign – Scotland Loves Local.

You can view Phil’s Powerpoint slides here: Phil Prentice Presentation (Greener Kirkcaldy October 2020).

The speakers were followed by a Q&A session with participants asking lots of interesting questions. The annual gathering was followed by an online AGM, where we used Zoom’s polling functions to enable members to vote. View our AGM agenda and papers here.

We received excellent comments from participants:

“Thanks everyone another great event & speakers”

“Goodnight all – well done very enjoyable and informative”

 “Thank you, great event, excellent speakers and discussion”