23–24 APRIL 2026 | Stranraer
What does it take for a neighbourhood to shape its own future?
In April 2026, WWDN LABS returns with a focus on neighbourhoods: a scale where culture is lived, relationships are built, and change becomes tangible.
Creative Neighbourhoods is the second LABS event for WWDN, following our first on Community Wealth Building and the national kNOw One Place forum – the UK’s first creative placemaking conference. Together, these gatherings ask a simple but urgent question: how do we move from ambition to action, and from policy to place?
Find out more about the contributors…
Why Neighbourhoods? Why Now?
Across Scotland, there is a growing expectation that decisions about places should be shaped locally, with communities supported to lead. National priorities – from Community Wealth Building and Local Place Plans to the Culture Strategy for Scotland and the National Performance Framework – are increasingly aligned around fairness, wellbeing, and local agency.
But while much of this thinking happens at town, city, or regional level, everyday life is organised much closer to home.
- Neighbourhoods are where people meet
- Where culture happens informally
- Where trust is built
- Where the impact of decisions-good or bad-is felt first
This LABS event takes the ambition of local decision-making down to the neighbourhood scale, asking what support, resources, and structures need to be in place so communities can genuinely influence and lead how their places grow.
Where: Learning from Stranraer
The LABS will take place on 23–24 April 2026 at North West Castle in Stranraer, a town where creative activity is playing a visible role in regeneration and community confidence.
Stranraer offers something important: not a perfect model, but real, lived experience. Creative projects here have helped reconnect people to place, strengthen local networks, and open up new ways of thinking about assets, opportunity, and ownership.
Using Stranraer as a living case study, we’ll work together to imagine what a well-supported, creative, community-led neighbourhood looks like-and what it takes to sustain it.
Photographer credit Colin Tennan
What Makes a Creative Neighbourhood Strong?
This LABS focuses on the practical essentials that underpin confident, resilient neighbourhoods:
- The spaces where people gather and create
- The skills and knowledge people carry
- The resources and support close at hand
- The networks and relationships that make change possible
- The ability to influence decisions that affect everyday life
- The local assets and opportunities communities can shape and lead
These are the building blocks of creative placemaking when it is rooted in fairness, inclusion, and local control.
Community Wealth Building as a Framework
Community Wealth Building (CWB) gives us a powerful framework for this work-one that keeps wealth, opportunity, and decision-making local.
At this LABS, we’ll explore how CWB principles can meaningfully support neighbourhood-led creative development, and how regional and local CWB action plans can better serve grassroots community work.
The aim is not to retrofit creativity into policy, but to recognise it as a core driver of community wealth, wellbeing, and resilience.
Photographer credit Kirstin McEwan
What We’re Working Towards
Our shared goal is to begin building a neighbourhood-scale blueprint for creative placemaking – something practical, adaptable, and shaped by those closest to the work.
By the end of the LABS, we aim to:
- Create the foundations of a Creative Placemaking Neighbourhood Blueprint
- Identify the conditions, resources, and supports communities need to lead
- Strengthen links between local practice and national policy
- Share learning from Stranraer and connect it to other places across Scotland
- Build confidence, tools, and relationships that participants can take home
- Strengthen the What We Do Now network as a space for learning, action, and advocacy
Photographer credit Kirstin McEwan
Who This LABS Is For
We want to bring together people working at different levels of place, including:
- Local community members and grassroots groups
- Artists, architects, and creative practitioners
- Local authorities and anchor organisations
- Policymakers and funders
- Third sector organisations, social enterprises, and development trusts
What matters most is not your role, but your interest in community-led, creative approaches to place.
The Questions We’ll Ask Together
Across the two days, we’ll return to a shared set of questions:
- What does a creative and confident neighbourhood really look like?
- What do people need close at hand to lead place development?
- How do neighbourhoods gain real agency in decisions that affect them?
- What assets and opportunities can communities shape or own?
- What role should organisations play in supporting-not steering-local work?
- How can Community Wealth Building guide creative neighbourhood development?
- And what can Stranraer teach other places across Scotland?
LABS 2026 is not about arriving with answers, it’s about creating the space to think, learn, and build together-starting where people live.
What we do next starts close to home.
BOOKING CLOSES 5PM TUESDAY 21 APRIL
The Full Programme
Good to Know
- The event will take place in the North West Castle Hotel’s Castle Suite on the basement floor where there is a ramp or two steps between the Lounge and the Ballroom.
- Access: The venue has level access to the ground floor from the rear entrance on Royal Crescent. There is a lift to all floors in the hotel. There is an accessible toilet on the ground floor. Service dogs are welcome. For queries about access to and within the Hotel, or for enquiries about dogs attending / staying in the hotel (£10 a night), please contact the Hotel directly on 01776 704413 / hotel@northwestcastle.co.uk
- Free parking is available at the hotel (70+ spaces) including electric charging points. Two disabled parking spaces are available at the rear entrance to the Hotel.
- The Hotel is a 10 minute walk from Stranraer train station and a 5 minute walk from the bus stop at the rear of the Tesco Superstore.
Discounted accommodation is available at the North West Castle Hotel for event attendees. There are two fully accessible bedrooms in the Hotel.
Indicative prices are:
- Bed and breakfast, Single Occupancy – £102 per night
- Dinner, bed and breakfast, Single Occupancy – £110 per night
- Bed and breakfast, Two People Sharing – £57 per person per night
- Dinner, bed and breakfast, Two People Sharing – £65 per person per night
Please book your discounted accommodation directly with the Hotel on 01776 704413 stating you are attending the event. Full payment will be required at the time of booking.
Further Stranraer accommodation information: Visit Scotland – Dumfries & Galloway, Stranraer Development Trust – Accommodation, D&G Online – Accommodation
Where possible, we encourage attendees to choose responsible, sustainable or shared travel options to attend the LABS.
Transport options:
- Coordinated Minibus – The Stove will operate a 16 seater minibus return service for attendees between Dumfries and Stranraer via Castle Douglas and Newton Stewart.
- Car – Take the A75 from the east and A77 from the north and south. Further travel information links below will inform of road conditions.
- Train – Stranraer train station is a terminus. The line connects to Ayr where you change trains for Glasgow Prestwick Airport, Kilmarnock and Glasgow Central or Irvine, Paisley Gilmour Street and Glasgow Central. Timetables and tickets at Scotrail.
- Bus – The 500 bus runs from Dumfries (with stops at Dumfries Train Station and the Whitesands) to Stranraer (Tesco Superstore) via Castle Douglas, Gatehouse of Fleet and Newton Stewart. The journey takes approximately 2.5 hours. Bus timetables at Dumfries & Galloway Council’s website.
- Ferry – Stenaline sail daily between Belfast and Cairnryan. The sailing takes approximately 2.5 hours. The 358 / 360 bus operates between Cairnryan and Stranraer (Tesco Superstore) and takes approximately 15 minutes.
- Plane – Arrivals at Glasgow Prestwick Airport can take the train to Stranraer. Arrivals at Glasgow Airport can take the 757 bus to Paisley Gilmour Street station and then the train to Stranraer.
Further travel information: Stranraer Development Trust, D&G Online – Travel, Dumfries & Galloway Council – Public Transport, SWestrans (The South West of Scotland Transport Partnership), Traveline Scotland, Transport Scotlan
