At Smart Village Scotland we are very clear on our objectives - for the wider project and at an individual community or village level. That is why as well as having our 'Services Wheel' we also created an outcome or 'Results' wheel to ensure we are always focused on achieving our objectives. This also helps us start our conversations with villages around their aims and objectives, diverse as they will be.
One of the six outcomes we hope to help achieve is Sustainable Local Economy. While the wheel works well to get ideas over quickly and easily, we know there are limitations. One of the debates we had was whether we should use the tractor as an icon as this may play on the misconception that rural business = agriculture. We know this is very much not the case; we hoped to show a connection to the natural environment and how a local rural economy can develop a local eco-sytem.
However we could have simply used 'Sustainable' which would have been more explicit in terms of addressing the Climate Emergency We all need to be playing our part in achieving the targets set by Scottish Government as individuals, enterprises, organisations and communities. Therefore a 'sustainable local economy' is only truly sustainable if the environment and the future of the environment is taken into consideration.