“HeartTalk Porty is a project of Action Porty (who run Bellfield), with help from Grassroots2Global (who support community processes, e.g. in Torry). The group of locals who have come together to help organise HeartTalk include folk involved in Action Porty, the Wash House, St Marks, and other venues and local organisations.
This group first met in August 2020 to discuss how to find out what is important to people locally. Action Porty secured a small grant from Edinburgh Council’s Neighbourhood Grant Fund. The original idea, called ‘Porty 2025’, was to look at whether there is a need for an ‘anchor organisation’ – something to take a bit of a birds-eye view on Portobello as a community, help drive some bigger cross-organisation initiatives, and/or help with longer terms thinking – and whether Action Porty should take on that role.
Since then, after consulting widely, we have put the time into developing the HeartTalk Porty idea intended to reach all parts and identify WHAT folk’s key priorities, needs and visions are, and then HOW we as a community can act on them to make them real.
An initial, well attended, HeartTalk Porty information meeting took place at Bellfield in August 2021 to kick off the project and gauge interest in a fairly small scale way. We are now wanting to engage wider, and we hope you’ll join in with a conversation or get involved by helping to organise things.
We hope that the HeartTalk conversations can have their own self-generated outcomes, can connect to make wider changes where appropriate, and can help us to collectively develop a shared vision and shared decision-making processes to enable us all to ensure the community’s priorities are realised.
Will there be another HTP? We’re deciding in the summer… let us know what you think here.
Heart Talk Porty 