In today's global mobile economy many people long to feel rooted and part of a community. The Director of Community Celebration of Place, Larry Long, believes that young people and adults alike will act positively on that feeling of belonging when it’s fostered.

Larry Long has spent 30 years working with communities using music, performance, art and oral history to bring together children and elders, and people of different backgrounds - economic, faith, racial, and cultural - to honor and celebrate our commonalities and differences through a program entitled Elders’ Wisdom, Children’s Song.

This multi-generational learning process is run in both rural and urban school communities throughout the United States. Elders representing the many cultures of the school community visit local schools and share their life stories with children who then prepare recitations and songs about what they have heard. These are later performed at community-wide celebrations.

The project is arts based, with non-professional older people bringing the study of their lives into the classroom. Students have fun, while carrying out the important public task of recording oral history. The project is cross-disciplinary: both teachers and students become learners and decision makers, local elders become teachers and the community becomes the schoolhouse. The process crosses lines of class, complexion, age and culture.

In his first visit to Scotland, Larry Long will be leading a one-day seminar to share his experience of bringing generations together through oral history and song.

This seminar starts from the reality that some children are harmed by exposure to alcohol while in the womb. Although this birth defect is 100% preventable, it has not always been prevented. The Scottish Government deserves praise for encouraging women who are pregnant or trying to conceive not to drink alcohol -- and for finally acknowledging that Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (and its most severe form "Foetal Alcohol Syndrome") has been under-diagnosed across Scotland.

The risk is not limited solely to binge drinkers or those who are alcohol-dependent. Drinking alcohol during pregnancy -- including during the weeks before confirming a pregnancy -- creates an unpredictable, but real, risk of giving birth to babies whose brains and nervous systems have been permanently damaged by exposure to alcohol.

Prevention, of course, is the best strategy for the future. But, what about the well-being of children who have already been affected by Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (or FASD)? How can they be properly identified and diagnosed? What could and should be done to improve their lives and life chances?

Leadership in organisations and leadership at all levels is vital in turning around the experience of Scotland’s children. To create flourishing childhoods requires a new approach to leadership, an approach that empowers staff, recognises the value of their creativity, their passion and their care.

This day will explore how Appreciative Inquiry focuses on finding out what works; what really engages and energises organisations, teams and individuals as opposed to a deficit focused analysis of what is ‘wrong’.