& now on film! … ‘The Common Ground Forum’

The contribution that civic mediation can make to finding ways forward on contested issues is illustrated and confirmed by the collaboration and good relationships now being seen in the work of The Common Ground Forum on deer management – and this has received some real recognition over recent weeks.

Helen Macintyre’s article for The Pebble Trust talks about how the work ‘has helped to break down the long-standing disagreements and animosity about deer management practices, building up trust between stakeholders so that they could move forward together’.

The initiative won the ‘innovation’ award at the 2024 Nature of Scotland Awards.

And now you can get a real sense of the Forum’s work in a short four-minute film featuring some of the people who are involved which has been posted on the YouTube channel of Scotland: The Big Picture. Peter Cairns, introducing the film on his LinkedIn page, says ‘for decades, discussions about the management of deer have been characterised by low trust and entrenched opinions, with deer becoming a totem for conflict around wider changes in land use, but that could finally be changing. In the first in a series of films from SCOTLAND: The Big Picture‘s Fiadh project, we learn about the work of The Common Ground Forum, a network of stakeholders from the upland deer sector, who are committed to a more collaborative approach to deer management, based on mutual respect and consensus building’.

Published 6 December 2024