Scotland’s Marine Futures

Getting beneath the surface and building collaboration.

Background

Centre for Good Relations (CfGR) is currently facilitating a process called Scotland’s Marine Futures (previously known as Making Waves): meeting with and hearing from stakeholders in the marine space about issues affecting their communities and sectors, and exploring avenues for facilitated dialogue around those issues. 

The focus of the process to date has been mainly in Shetland, where, following discussions with a range of people, we ran a series of Civic Workshops in Lerwick in 2025 for local stakeholders and those in national policymaking to collectively explore the increasing pressures and significant changes that are being experienced by different marine interests.

Building upon the Shetland and national conversations from this initial pilot phase – including a widespread feeling of consultation fatigue – CfGR is also further exploring marine issues being experienced in Orkney and Outer Hebrides to hear if there is appetite for a similar (or, indeed, different) process that might be helpful in their specific contexts. 

Who’s Involved

This process is supported by a National Reference Group with members from:

As part of the process, a local steering group has been established in Shetland, which is similarly made up of a cross section of different marine interests.

If you have any questions about the process and our role, please do not hesitate to get in touch with our Practitioner Liam at Liam@centreforgoodrelations.com .

For reference too, please find below a brief overview of the overall process to-date:

and for interest and background, summary notes of the 2 Civic Workshops held in Shetland:

If you are interested in helping to fund our work, please contact our Directors, Abdul Rahim or Sam Tedcastle: abdul@centreforgoodrelations.com, sam@centreforgoodrelations.com.