At the beginning of the Perth & Kinross Economic Summit, by Invest in Perth everyone at our table introduced themselves. I described how Blue Noun helps people with language, and described it as a business that couldn’t happen anywhere but Perthshire.
I’ve thought about that a lot.
I could open a language school in almost any city. But I couldn’t create what I create here. Certainly not with the same authenticity, relationship with the community – and for my guests, affordable cost versus great result ratio.
Perthshire isn’t simply where my business happens to be based.
I chose it.
The extraordinariness of Perthshire makes Blue Noun possible.
How We Help with English Language Learning
Blue Noun winds English language learning around the culture, communities, history, heritage, food, drink and glorious landscape of this region.
Over the years I’ve become an expert not just in language learning, but in the arts, crafts and cultural offer of this part of Scotland.
And yet, as a small business that doesn’t fit neatly into any single sector (are we education, tourism, culture?) Blue Noun has often felt invisible to the people making policy and deciding where business support goes.
I want my work to be known here.
More than that, I want the economic model Blue Noun represents to be part of the conversation about Perth and Kinross’s economic future, because it offers solutions.
So when Perth & Kinross Council invited local businesses to debate the question “What kind of economy do we want to build?”, I wanted to be in the room.
One of those solutions is an economic model in which being small is not necessarily a disadvantage. Blue Noun creates value through being distinctive, deeply connected to place and difficult to commoditise — not by trying to compete with larger businesses on volume.
Its value also doesn’t stop with Blue Noun. We employ a variety of experts. Guests spend time and money with local accommodation providers, cafés, artists, makers, guides and other independent businesses.
The business works by connecting people to what is already here, so its success can help strengthen the wider local economy rather than simply extracting value from it.
People and place
The opening presentation was encouraging.
Eric Drysdale, Council Leader, talked about harnessing people and place to be visionary, about regenerative growth, stronger local supply chains, healthier communities and creating economic and social value. He talked about better collaboration between the public and private sectors.
I was impressed. I’ve been following the work of regenerating Perth City Centre with interest, including the New Perth Art Museum.
This was my first time seeing the region-wide plan as a whole, including road infrastructure.
A Generic Definition of Progress?
The subsequent speakers approached the same regional economic problems from different angles.
First Minister of Scotland John Swinney spoke warmly about Perthshire, but understandably his remit is national: economic growth, housing, infrastructure, employment, net zero and making Scotland attractive to investment.
I have a lot of time for him, and that’s his job.
Other speakers represented enormous opportunities for investment and employment.
But as I listened, I became aware of a gap between what I imagine when we talk about progress in Perthshire and what the conventional economic definition of progress seems to be.
More housing. Faster development. Less planning, Data centres. Investment at scale. Fewer barriers to investors.
An investment banker speaker gave Manchester as an example of vibrancy and ‘attractiveness’ to investors as something we should be aiming for.
But what does a hub like Manchester look like for a large rural economy with a city?
We’ve been Here Before
Twenty years ago, towns and cities across Britain pursued the same retailers and the same developments in the name of economic success. High streets became increasingly homogenised.
Then online shopping arrived and those monocultural retail centres were devastated.
We’ve spent much of the last decade trying to help put character, independent businesses and life back into decimated town centres.
Making everywhere look like everywhere else turned out to be poor economic strategy.
Interestingly, the Invest in Perth website already understands this.
It celebrates the support given to small businesses precisely because it has helped Perth and Kinross distinguish itself from the “carbon-copy high streets of larger cities”, creating a distinctive local USP.
But surely that principle shouldn’t stop at the shopfront.
If becoming a carbon copy of everywhere else is bad economic strategy for our high streets, why would it be good economic strategy for the wider region?
The distinctiveness of Perthshire: its landscape, culture, food, craft, wildlife, communities and independent businesses isn’t something to preserve after we’ve built over it to grow the economy.
It should help determine how we grow it.
A Breath of Fresh Air
Thank goodness for the lively, chaired debate between local businesses – and fair play to the summit organisers for giving these businesses the stage to share their experiences.
David Clegg, Editor of The Courier, Jade Robertson of Little Lies, Victoria Ritchie of Highland Health Store and Graeme Christie of Howden Insurance talked frankly about the obstacles facing their businesses.
Failing bus services. Expensive parking. Business rates that no longer make sense against falling city-centre footfall. Empty premises. The difficulty of relocating a business to Perth.
The increasing difficulty of finding and retaining customers who align with your brand.
The increasing costs of running a business.
David Clegg described it as “cumulative friction.” Businesses can weather one or two headwinds. But eventually all those individually survivable difficulties accumulate.
Jade Robertson talked about wanting her fashion business to have a presence in Perth city centre: to contribute to its rejuvenation and be a visible example of creativity for younger people, but the costs are too high.
They presented brilliantly, and at the very least, visibly demonstrated that Perthshire is full of remarkable people doing remarkable things. (A fact my business is based on)
But who was speaking for the landscape?
This was the voice I increasingly felt was missing.
The summit celebrated Perthshire enterprise.
Eric Drysdale’s film showed the investment and positive change already happening across the region. The development of Perth city centre is genuinely exciting. It promoted Perthshire as Scotland’s larder. The screen filled with forests, lochs and mountaintops.
Successive speakers mentioned that they lived only a few miles away, and talked about the exceptional quality of life they enjoy here.
And yet the landscape increasingly seemed to become a backdrop to the economic conversation.
Beautiful scenery, to illustate a discussion about what we might build on it next.
Perthshire’s landscape is not empty space waiting to be filled
For many established rural businesses, there is a correlation between the wildness of the landscape and how we share it.
Our landscape isn’t just something for wealth tech CEOs to admire through the car window on their way into Perth.
It is our land.
Our heritage.
It’s part of why people live here, why people visit, why businesses locate here and why so many things made here have meaning.
→ See my blog on Perthshire and the VisitScotland Tourism Statistics
Undisturbed natural landscape is a huge economic asset
And yet where was the impact on nature in our definition of economic growth?
Where was wildlife?
Where was culture?
Perth (and Perthshire) is the onlyUNESCO City of Craft and Folk Art in the entire UK.
A fact that was not mentioned once yesterday.
It’s a status our artisans and crafters feel is widely under-promoted and under-supported.
Why isn’t that central to the story we are telling about place?
Progress Does Not Look the Same to Everyone
This image encapsulates the problem. It is presented as a positive image of growth. But a new housing estate spreading across a meadow has an environmental cost.
That there is investment available to bring data farms to Perth and Kinross is not good news for all.
Support the Alternative: The Micro Businesses which are Already Here
Not every proposed development should be seized upon because it promises investment and jobs. Those benefits need to be weighed against what is lost.
Who speaks for the landscape in that calculation?
There seemed to me to be a cumulative pull towards technology and scale as solutions: build more, attract more capital, create the conditions for bigger investment.
I’m not against development. The city-centre investment we celebrated at the summit demonstrates exactly why good development matters.
But I’d like Perthshire to have a bigger ambition than being the next rural region to secure a data centre.
What if we prioritised becoming exceptionally good at protecting and growing the economic value of the things that cannot be replicated somewhere else?
Our landscape. Food. Craft. Culture. Wildlife. Towns and villages. Independent businesses. Knowledge. Communities.
When We Were Asked What We Needed
In the final part of the summit, businesses were asked for their opinions.
What is holding you back?
And what could we invest in that would help your business grow?
Here are my answers
First: public transport.
When I created Blue Noun eight years ago, using public transport was part of the business model. It was one way I intended to reduce the environmental impact of international tourism.
Since then, I’ve watched our local bus service deteriorate dramatically.
I can sell someone a £2,000 holiday. I cannot have them standing at a bus stop waiting for a bus that doesn’t arrive.
If we want businesses to build lower-carbon models, the public infrastructure has to make those models possible.
Second: business support needs to get better at recognising businesses that cross sectors.
Blue Noun is education, culture and tourism.
The overlap isn’t a problem with my business. The overlap is where the innovation happens.
We heard a lot about supporting innovators during the summit. But innovation, by definition, doesn’t always fit comfortably into the boxes institutions have already created.
I’ve repeatedly been turned down for funding and grants as I am not ‘purely tourism’ or ‘purely education’.
Why can’t systems see that being neither one thing or another is innovation?
I know what could happen if this business reached more of the right people overseas: more visitors, more local work, more money spent in Perthshire’s accommodation, restaurants, cafés, shops and cultural businesses.
But first, the people supporting economic development need to be able to see businesses like mine.
And my third point was the one I’d been thinking about all day:
Third. Perthshire isn't empty space waiting to be filled.
If we’re genuinely asking what kind of economy we want to build for Perthshire, the answer must balance national targets, major employers, investors and institutions with people whose livelihoods are already entwined with this place.
The economic forum was a great start.
But it is clear that existing Perthsire businesses answered, ‘more support‘ in many different ways.
I started the day by saying Blue Noun couldn’t happen anywhere but Perthshire.
And it is a measure of the economy I’d like us to build around.
What is already working, and how can we make it better? Not all businesses are designed to scale and bring in millions, but collectively, we have many, many solutions.
Understand What Micro Businesses Need
For a micro business, giving up a day for a conference is a big thing. (I wonder how many others went home and worked until 10 at night to make up the time).
More than anything, I’m glad we were asked in this format. (Finally).
I now hope that our opinions will be heard.
→ Connect with me on LinkedIn if you like what you are reading
Further Information
UNESCO Creative City of Crafts and Folk Art
Notes From the Margins on LinkedIn
What could place-led economic development look like in practice? Read my vision for reimagining Crieff as an eco-tourism destination →
