A TOWN at the heart of a regeneration project is one of seven areas picked for an initiative to encourage young people to open a high street business.
Kirkintilloch in East Dunbartonshire will be one of the areas hosting the TestTown scheme, in which young people are given help with ideas for new shops in a bid to revitalise flagging town centres.
Perth is the only other Scottish area picked for the project, being run by the Carnegie UK Trust, and which targets 16 to 30-year-olds. Other areas for the initiative, to be held this summer, include Manchester, Rhyl, and Coleraine. Regional winners will receive £500 start-up funding, while the national winner will get £10,000 to invest in a business.
Jim Metcalfe of the Carnegie UK Trust said: "The time has come to offer young people the opportunity to bring a new perspective to our high streets. In the age of online shopping and social media, town centres need to adapt to woo local people back into them.
"TestTown will demonstrate that imaginative, youthful thinking can help our flagging high streets. It will show young people they can realise their potential and create great businesses.
"There is chronic youth unemployment and the sight of vacant shops in our town centres is something this initiative aims to change."
Kirkintilloch Councillor Rhondda Geekie, leader of East Dunbartonshire Council, said it would create a "vibrant" town centre.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article