Asset Mapping at the Edge

The Communities on the Edge Project is currently undertaking 'asset mapping exercises' in the three communities of Douglas, Langholm and Yetholm. Asset mapping exercises are positive and enjoyable approaches to learning about your community. They help you think positively about the place in which you live and work, and challenge you to recognise how other people see and experience the same community. To find out more about this technique

Mapping community assets means:

• collecting an inventory of all the good things about your community,
• ranking the most valued aspects of your community; and,
• discovering the reasons why people place high value on the assets in your community

Once you have this map of the valued aspects of your community, you can collectively strategise about how to build on the assets in order to sustain and enhance them for future generations. The process of asset mapping provides a critical element of community development - the engagement of people in the shaping of their community.

Long-term rural residents may feel they already know what is good about their community and ask 'Why bother?' The main benefits of asset mapping are getting a common view of what is important; affirming or broadening what local people think; and hearing and appreciating the opinions of others.

Although traditionally community development has been approached in terms of needs, this approach to change has major limitations. Needs approaches tend to divide people and communities. Articulating needs often becomes a competitive process and frequently pits communities and organisations against each other. The needs approach fragments communities instead of bringing them together.

Every place has its own set of unique qualities which are its assets and the process of recognising this can change the way we think about the places where we live. Changing minds can change people who, in turn, will lead the way to the sustainable and resilient rural communities of the future.