Outside The Box was pleased to welcome the Scottish Government’s publication of ‘A Connected Scotland‘ – its “strategy for tackling social isolation and loneliness and building stronger social connections”. This ‘world-leading strategy’ aims at building stronger social connections. It is being discussed in the Scottish Parliament today.

Making connections is key to the work we do at Outside The Box, in helping to build stronger, more inclusive communities.

The latest video highlighting the work of our Rural Wisdom project focuses on ‘Bringing People Together’:

Speaking in the video, our development workers found that sometimes the first step is just simply getting people in the same room. By creating spaces that enable conversations we can help join the dots in a community – perhaps between someone with an idea, and someone else who has the resources to facilitate it.

They also bring people together on a wider scale, stating that when a rural community starts to connect with one another, that’s when it can take ownership and start shaping local services and activities to better suit local needs.

Rural Wisdom has also helped to foster inter-generational connections. In Eaglesham, the connections made between a school and an older people’s home has had a big impact on all those involved.

Finally, by connecting rural communities in Scotland with those in Wales, we are able to learn from each other, share knowledge and help improve things for rural communities on a national scale. By enabling connections, we become something bigger than ourselves and can feed shared learning into policy formation.