What an opening day! With a room brimming with enthusiasm and experience, delegates on Day One were treated to speakers from a range of backgrounds and situations who all shared their lived experience of community economic development. Acknowledging the challenging contexts of our times, a key theme from the beginning of the day was that community is the centre and heart of life in 2011 and economic development is a critical aspect of a healthy community. We were shown this in scene setting accounts of the ongoing clean up and daily life in Christchurch, in Mayor Len Brown’s vision for Auckland to be the most liveable city in the world and in Ngarimu Blair’s account of Ngati Whatua from the early 1800s to the present day.

Conal McFeely also described it in his stories about social enterprise in Creggan, a large housing estate in Derry. Here, despite almost overwhelming destruction, disenchantment and anger Creggan Enterprises emerged from the closure of a factory to now provide 100,000 square feet of retail, community service and workspace to local people. This social economy is part of a mixed and more balanced overall economy that has created change where community led development is key to success.

And not only in Northern Ireland, Steve Lawrence from the Australian Social Innovation Exchange stressed the need for cross sectoral collaboration in order to create and sustain “an economy that works for everyone”.  He described how every citizen needs to be changemaker  in order for our societies to be resilient, noting that social capital alone is not enough.

This multi-dimensional nature of community economic development was one that came up in most discussions, as was learning by doing, and from mistakes. In central Melbourne, for example, Ceres Environmental Education Centre trains and feeds a local population keen to reconnect with their food. They do this in a variety of creative ways, with a “just do it and ask for forgiveness later” attitude and say that Council has caught up with them, but bankers and lenders haven’t quite. Because they don’t own the land they can not get loans for when cash flow is bumpy, or to fund further development.

But financiers are working on this. Ingrid Burkett described Foresters Community Finance and their research into financing social enterprise which explored both demand and supply sides of equation to offer a nuanced understanding of appropriate financing for different stages of development and types of social enterprise. And, in a different way, Hugh Rolo described a fascinating scheme in the UK whereby communities invest in local enterprises through a share issue. These shares are not tradable and usually provide only a very modest return. This means the services invested in are taken out of the speculative market to offer medium to long term propositions for enterprises people are passionate about. Community shares can be used to lever other investment through loans and grants and provide a direct way for communities to support enterprises they value in an ongoing way. What a great way to harness community led development energies!

More detail of these presentations and others will be available on the conference website soon: www.ced.org.nz.