Centre Report October 2021
Centre Update October 2021
Introduction
Welcome to our October Centre update. All of a sudden this year is flying by and we are getting busier week on week. It great to have a buzz back in the Centre, with lots of our groups and activities now taking place “in-house”. Of course, we are mindful of the fact that need to remain vigilant, to avoid spreading Covid. Hand-sanitiser is available at various points throughout the Centre, windows and doors are open in meeting spaces, masks should be worn when walking around and everyone should continue to maintain a minimum of a 1m distance. Thanks to everyone for continuing to respect and follow these guidelines.
We are currently recruiting new members for our Centre User Group committee. This group meets 5 times per year on a Tuesday morning and is Chaired by a Centre User. The committee is an integral part of our Centre Constitution as it provides an opportunity to give feedback on Centre Activities and to influence decision making. Anyone who is currently a member of any of our groups can apply to join the Centre User committee. BSL interpreters are provided. If you are interested in joining this important group please contact: linseystocks@forthvalleysensorycentre.org to note your interest.
If you have called into the Centre in the last week you may have noticed our Halloween decorations which add a bit of spooky fun and colour. Look out for some Halloween themed specials in our café in coming weeks and why not come along to our Halloween Quiz night, hosted by Laura and Joe Cluxton on Friday 29 October, 7pm – 10pm. Great fun, great prizes and a chance to catch up with friends. The event is BYOB and there will be a light buffet included in the ticket price of £10.
We have a number of other activities taking place in the next few weeks. We are extremely proud to have won the National SCVO Climate Conscious Award for our innovative Making Sense of Climate Challenge Project. As you probably know, this project is about making information more accessible. Project Co-ordinator Sara Burns is developing more accessible information on Energy Saving and has a series of information sessions coming up at the Centre. Sara and I have also been invited to speak at the Falkirk Soroptomist meeting this month. This work is very topical, particularly as we approach the COP26 Climate Summit. We have been invited to speak at the Scottish Government Climate Ambition Event, and we also have information stands planned at Falkirk and North Lanarkshire College Climate fringe events. The theme of all our talks and presentations is raising awareness of the need for accessible information in order to provide equal access to information for blind and deaf people. We have an unparalleled opportunity to share this message with a “global” audience.
Something else a bit different; on 22 October we will be hosting a “mock election” event to trial Audio Voting for blind and partially sighted people, in conjunction with our Centre Partners, RNIB. Numbers are restricted and by invitation only but we will be publicising feedback on the outcome of the trials following the event.
We have many more exciting things to report on. I hope you enjoy reading the latest updates provided by FVSC team members. As always you can find the most up-to-date information by visiting our website: www.forthvalleysensorycentre.org or on facebook/Twitter, @FVSensoryCentre.
1. Centre Groups and Activities – Linsey Stocks, Activities Co-ordinator
September/October have been eventful months here!
Firstly as mentioned in the previous centre report, we held our tree planting and time capsule planting event on September 3rd. The event was a great success, we invited along focus group members and staff from RNIB Scotland, NHS Forth Valley and Forth Valley Sensory Centre, Falkirk Provost Billy Buchannan, Windsor Park PS teacher and pupils, Local MSPs and Councillors, and Falkirk Soroptimists who very generously donated funding for our beautiful Acer tree which is now sitting pride of place in our Sensory Garden. Check out the coverage of the event on our website here: https://www.forthvalleysensorycentre.org/provost-praises-resilience-of-sensory-people/
We also said a fond farewell to our choir mistress, Catriona Lang, who has decided to step down to focus on her family. The group came together to sing some songs in our Sensory Garden, then came inside for some tea and cake! This event also allowed the group to meet with our brand-new Choir Leader, Aimee Toshney, who will be taking over the group starting 18th October 2021. Check out one of our song medleys and Lawson’s Catriona’s Farewell poem at our website here: https://www.forthvalleysensorycentre.org/catrionas-swan-song/ The group will be resuming its fortnightly meetings starting from 18th October, from 10.30am-12pm, the group costs £5.
Our Stirling Group had the chance to meet up for the first time in eighteen months at the beginning of September. We took a trip out to Dobbies where we had some refreshments and had a chat about what kinds of things they’d like to do for future sessions. We will also be taking on a new venue starting from October! On the 12th October we will be meeting at Victoria Hall in Dunblane where our very own Sara Burns will be coming along to chat with the group about our Energy Redress Project. This outreach group meets on the second Tuesday of every month from 11am-1pm.
Speaking of social groups, our Falkirk VI Social group will be making its return in October too. Our first session will be a chance for our group to have a catch up after a long absence, and to meet our new volunteer for the group, Ann McFarlane! We look forward to seeing what kinds of different things the group would like to get up to in future. This group meets on the second Monday of the month from 10.30am-12pm.
The art and craft group has been doing very well since the centre has reopened, with numbers more than doubling since before pandemic times! Art tutor Val Martin has been hard at work creating tactile artwork with the group including painting and felting! Keep an eye out for new and different artwork decorating our centre very soon.
Our History Group is continuing to enjoy new and interesting talks, in September we were delighted to be invited along to a private showing at The Smith Art Gallery in Stirling. Heather Carroll gave us an art history talk on some of the paintings on display in the main gallery, and also gave us a chance to see some of the pieces from their ‘The Perfect Foil’ by Robert Mach exhibition including an enormous tiger decorated with tunnocks teacake foil wrappers! Well worth a look if art is your thing! For our October meeting we will be welcoming former provost, and chairman of the board, Pat Reid along to give us a talk on this history of Falkirk Street Signs.
The Talk and Sign Group enjoyed a trip out to the Jupiter Wildlife Project in Grangemouth where we were given a tour of the different areas of the project before we did some bramble picking to make our own jam. Groundskeeper Ellie also showed us how to make an easy campfire bread! Check out our Talk and Sign Facebook page for previous outings and upcoming events. For October we are looking forward to a Halloween party on the 18th October where we are going to make our own spooky pizzas and play some party games!
An exciting new group starting in October is our brand new Gaming group, aimed at students with sensory loss from S1-S6, this group is collaborating with Triple Tap Tech to explore all things accessibility across different computing platforms. Triple Tap Tech are even going to allow the group to create their own content on their website allowing the group to offer their reviews of different games. To help this group we are very grateful to have been donated a Nintendo Switch, Oculus VR headsets, tablets, and games from Falkirk Community Learning and Development. This group will be taking place every Friday from 7.30pm-9pm.
Our Youth Group will be saying farewell to Grace Cameron from Falkirk Community Learning and Development team who has been a wonderful partnership over the past eight months. She has very kindly donated a number of items to keep the Youth Group occupied including birdboxes, colouring kits, flipbook kits, and badminton and table tennis equipment. We are very thankful for the time she has been able to spend with us and wish her all the best in her new position. The Youth Group will be moving to a new earlier time of 6pm-7.15pm as of the 8th October 2021.
There is, of course, much more happening at the centre too including the Deaf Club, BSL OAP Group, IT Classes and Braille. If you’d like to know more about what’s happening at the centre you can pop in for a ‘What’s On’ Guide or get in touch with Linsey at linseystocks@forthvalleysensorycentre.org.
Please note that we are still maintaining social distancing for our activities, so some groups may be limited, get in touch with Linsey to register your interest in any of our groups or classes.
2. Volunteering – Hannah Wilson, Volunteer Co-ordinator
The kitchen garden and sensory garden are still chugging away. The Caledonia Project are still attending every Tuesday and Windsor Park are looking to come back weekly on Thursdays. We’re currently in the process of clearing the garden and getting a rota in place that volunteers and groups can follow. We have two new school-aged volunteers who will be helping to keep the outside of the Centre spic and span every Monday. The volunteers have also been informed to keep an eye on our beautiful acer tree in the sensory garden! The Tree Planting ceremony was a great success and we want to ensure that its legacy is around for many years to come.
Jasmine (our school pupil placement) will be here at the Centre until the end of the school year next June, she will be helping out with admin and the café. She’s taken to the placement like a duck to water and is really getting involved. So far each week she’s made something new (lattes and lemon cupcakes so far!) and will be drafting a BSL poster or leaflet for use in the café with signs for different food, drinks, and pleasantries. This will helpfully help ease any communication problems that might arise in the café from now on. Please look forward to seeing it on display. Keeping on with the school theme, from the 20th of October onwards, two pupils and their support worker from Carmuirs Primary will be stopping by from 2-3pm. Hopefully we’ll be able to build up further connections with them.
Sight and Sound are eager to use our tech hub to do focus groups and presentations on their assistive and app technologies. A few of our current groups are interested in getting involved with this too so this is a promising new development. They are currently organising things on their end and we’ll proceed once they’ve finished reshuffling. Vision PK is also interested in building a partnership. A collaboration between us, Vision PK, and Sight and Sound is a possibility that will definitely by explored. There will be a 30 minute session for hands-on BSL before our voices off group starting the 14th October. The session will be held every 2 weeks. Anyone who is interested is free to stop by, no prior BSL knowledge is required.
We’ve taken on a few more volunteers who will be undergoing training shortly. A few of our volunteers have completed their MIDAS training through Dial-a-Journey, so this will now allow us to expand our groups to people who cannot travel under their own means. In the first week of November I will be holding our first Zoom volunteer meeting as the new volunteer co-ordinator. I am hoping to make this a regular occurrence, on a monthly or bimonthly basis. This can be an informal online drop-in group for updates and suggestions.
Our next big volunteer events are our tactile blind voting trial (22nd Oct), Halloween Quiz Party (29th Oct), and SHOP26 (5th/6th Nov). We’re very excited to be involved with these projects and are working hard to deliver the best experience we can. We are also working together to arrange sensory awareness workshops to deliver to employers and service providers. We’re hoping to launch a proto-version of this in November, with the goal of it being live for the AGM in January.
3. Publicity/Fundraising – Martin Allen, Fundraising and Publicity Manager
We continue to build our profiles across various media. In the last report we were just short of our 1500 twitter followers, this is now standing at 1526 so another 30 people, attracting a wide variety of interest including the DWP Group Director for North and East Scotland.
The news agenda has been boosted first by the arrival of our new Gaming Group, which received excellent support from Falkirk Community Learning and Development online and led to a lot of interest across social media. Linsey Stocks was interviewed by Central FM to promote the group.
We continue to support our partners in a number of ways. Thank you to Centre User Stephen Smith and Café Assistant Tom Hutchens for taking part in a photoshoot with Falkirk Council to show off our amazing Kitchen Garden and the work undertaken by Falkirk’s Criminal Justice team to create it. The local news article should be arriving in households all across Falkirk in the next few weeks.
Finally, our prestigious Climate Conscious Award win at the SCVO National Awards Ceremony on 1 October produced a wealth of good feeling and support online. The full ceremony can be viewed on you tube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmn-E6H1X6CXXsfc1WiK2BQ We had thousands of views on facebook as a result and lots of congratulations. CEO Jacquie was invited to present an overview of our project on an SCVO online Rise and Shine Webinar and our charity was mentioned in the latest edition of Third Force News TFN’s October edition is out now – read it here! We are expecting lots of further publicity around our work on Climate Challenge due to the topical content and impending COP26 summit in November.
Our funding bid to the IKEA Home fund was sadly unsuccessful but this was always a slightly long shot as we knew from the outset this fund would be over-subscribed. We have just submitted a new bid to ‘Love Local’ which provides funds for local communities, wellbeing and mental health being one of the strands of funding. We are looking for funding to support our groups and classes and cover core costs, for example tutor fees and materials. We would also like to be able to fund some outings as we know how much you all enjoy these.
The aim is to match fund this with a bid to the Falkirk Community Grant programme before the end of October. We have received an invitation to bid for funding from Blindcraft Trust and will be submitting a bid for a new ambassador project in the coming weeks. Wish us luck.
Perhaps most exciting is the return of live fundraising events. 29th October sees our Halloween Quiz event take place. Tickets still available at the time of writing but places are strictly limited. We have chosen to do this to keep our centre Users safe from Covid and provide a small scale but huge fun event with a quiz hosted by Laura and Joe Cluxton, plus party games and food!
We are also excited to report on the welcome return of our Winter Fayre. Details are still being finalised, but please pencil in Friday 3 December, 11am-3pm and we will let you know when this is confirmed. We hope to have our usual multitude of stalls with gift ideas for everyone as well as creations from a number of our groups. Guaranteed to fill you with festive cheer!
Another reminder that our Centre User Fundraising Group meets on the last Monday of each month 12:30-2pm, online via Zoom. This is an opportunity for you to share your fundraising suggestions. New members and ideas are always welcome. Please contact: martinallen@forthvalleysensorycentre.org for more information.
4. Climate Challenge – Sara Burns, Energy Redress Co-ordinator
Our Green Group is up and running with a brilliant session from Sandra from Friends of the Earth last month and Jules from Forth Environment Link to discuss topical Climate issues Local to the Forth Valley. This has been an excellent addition to the project and we were so pleased to welcome so many people last month. We hope the Green Group continues to grow and with more guest speakers providing a valuable insight into the work being done by Scottish Climate organisations.
As previously mentioned in this report, we were thrilled to win SCVO Climate Conscious Charity of the year for our Climate Challenge funded project ‘Making Sense of Energy Saving’. This project worked extremely hard at making Energy Saving information available and accessible and provided some great videos on maximising energy use in your house and worked with Home Energy Scotland. These videos, which include BSL interpretation, are all available to download and watch on our Centre Website: www.forthvalleysensorycentre.org Our current project was given a real boost and we are excited to build on the success. This has also allowed us to expand our presence and promote the work of the Centre at COP26 –the biggest Climate conference in the world.
As you may have read in the news energy prices are continuing to rise as price caps have been raised, we are really keen for our Centre Users not only to be informed about these changes but to know the Centre has a platform where any concerns about the rising prices or switching suppliers can be raised. Our Energy Advice drop in runs every Wednesday between 10-am and 1pm and is open to any general queries from energy prices, prepayment cards, smart meters, complaints or queried bills. If this time does not suit please get in touch with Sara, our Energy Redress Project Coordinator at saraburns@forthvalleysensorycentre.org or text/call/whatsapp 07719916050 or call the Centre on 01324 590888.
5. Employability Project – Kim Grant, Employability Co-ordinator
The employability project is going very well and now has a caseload of 12 clients. 6 of these have a hearing impairment and of these 6, 2 of them have been successful in securing employment. 2 have been successful in getting to the next stage of the interview process and the remaining 2 are building their CV’s up and preparing for the job application stage whilst actively looking for opportunities. Of the 4 clients with a visual loss 1 has been successful in securing part time work, with 1 other getting to interview stage. Of the remaining 2, one person is still actively searching for opportunities and the other is working on her confidence before searching and applying for work. In addition to this I have provided support for 2 others who are currently in employment – they have been given information on access to work and how it could benefit them in their workplace.
This is all real evidence that our project is much needed. There is also growing interest from other organisations.
I recently met with local organisations including Falkirk Job Centre, Cumbernauld College, Falkirk Chamber of Commerce and Falkirk Council as well as establishing connections with our local Howgate Shopping Centre, business gateway and Windsor Park Primary school. The purpose of developing these meetings is to create future working partnerships and provide them with support and guidance on employing people with a sensory condition. I am currently finalising a PowerPoint training guide for help and support which includes information on the Equality Act, recruitment, application process and applying for Access to Work.
In the following month I will be meeting with careers advisers from Falkirk College and Skills development Scotland to build a working relationship and help support young adults on their career journey. In addition to this I am facilitating a See Hear meeting to bring together all ideas, old and new from current members of RNIB, NHS, Falkirk Council and Windsor Park.
I continue to promote the project through Social Media, our online website and centre advertising.
If you have a sensory impairment or you know someone with a sensory impairment who would like some help with finding a job please contact me: kimgrant@forthvalleysensorycentre.org
6. Summary
Thanks to all staff who contributed to this report. I hope you found it interesting and that it whetted your appetite to find out more about what’s happening at the Centre and what we can do for you. Our what’s on guide changes regularly, so please visit our website to sign up for our quarterly newsletter. You are very welcome to call into the Centre, speak to any of our team members, and find out for yourself what we have to offer. If you have any questions, suggestions or requests, I would be delighted to hear from you. Please get in touch.
Jacquie Winning CEO,
12 October 2021
e-mail: jacquiewinning@forthvalleysensorycentre.org
www.forthvalleysensorycentre.org
@FVSensoryCentre