Like our industrial legacy, people deserve a second chance - Ewan Aitken

Ewan Aitken, CEO Cyrenians Scotland

It was a lovely way to enjoy the sea without fear of tides or perhaps more importantly not having to cope with getting sand everywhere after my swim!

There are nine of these huge pools along the Fife coast, built to hold sea water to allow the continued creation of salt from the sea even when the tide was out.

Salt making was a hard, labour-intensive and dirty job that at one time was Scotland’s biggest export along with fish and coal and wool. Unable to compete with sun dried salt of Spain the industry tailed off and our last working salt pan, in Prestonpans, closed in 1959. I love how the legacy of that dangerous and often unhealthy industry is the creation of clean and safe places to swim.

“Recycling” industrial legacy buildings is not a new phenomenon. The whisky bonds of Leith are now flats, the offices at St Margaret’s House at Jock’s Lodge are now amazing arts spaces and the new Pitt event space in Granton was once a warehouse.

Summerhall, though not industrial, is another wonderful recycled building, as is Norton Park School, which is now home to 23 charities, including my own organisation Cyrenians, which tackles the causes and consequences of homelessness.

Re-using buildings keeps us in touch with the past while creating a new future, it encourages us to look at what was and ask what might be.

In my line of work I’ve learned that it can be much the same for people. No matter our past - even if it is a story which we no longer want repeated - we can use what remains today to build a new future.

I believe it’s possible to give everyone a second chance – or even a third or fourth chance if needed. The day we write someone off is the day we write ourselves off. It can be very difficult for some of us to change but that’s often because they – and the people around them - find it hard to believe that they can.

I remember spending time with a guy whom I will call Bobby who’d spend time in prison for arson. Struggling to afford his drug habit, he’d taken money to set fire to someone’s house who owed his dealer money. A reprehensible act without question.

He managed to get clean in prison with the support of a charity, served his time and wanted to start afresh. But when he left he found himself ostracised by friends and family. The only person who would talk to him was his ex-dealer, which was not a healthy relationship.

I helped him move to a new town and get started again. It was a tough ask for someone aged 50 to move to a new place with no friends and precious few possessions, but he managed it.

With help from a charity, he found a job with an employer who was willing to see his past as his past. With the right support Bobby could see that change was possible for him. Just like the Saltpans, he built an optimistic future for himself, after a hard past.

Ewan Aitken is CEO of Cyrenians