We believe that regenerative activity will in large parts be driven at bioregional scale. At the moment, there is a disconnect between the huge ambition and urgency of regenerative work in bioregions and the limited funding flowing into these activities. What is needed is not only more funding, but a set of tools and institutions that allow this funding to circulate through the region while embodying the principles of regeneration. We want to try to close this gap through a series of innovations across the four pillars of governance (how money is allocated), intelligence (what do we aim for and how do we measure progress), projects (how we construct portfolios and empower project holders), and finance (how do we match the needs of place with the requirements of capital). Over time, this will create a financing ecosystem built on trust between community and capital. In partnership with Bioregioning Tayside, we are testing this approach in a region that's of great strategic importance to Scotland, and where we sense there is fertile ground for these new ideas to take root and flourish. The first phase of our partnership focused on assessing and strengthening the foundations of bioregioning in Tayside, using the guiding principles of the "Stocktake and Gap Analysis" as a tool, and distilling the team's existing deep knowledge of place in a Bioregional Plan. Across the 4 pillars of innovation, we embarked on projects to map opportunities for regeneration and translate those into economic benefits, to design participatory allocation mechanism which we will trial through micro-granting events, and to map existing regeneration projects across the region through development of an open-source tool (Projects).
