Crieff Community Gardeners are a constituted community group based in Crieff Community Garden. 

Our current space offers numerous opportunities for community groups to take part, whether it’s growing vegetables in one of our many raised beds, or creating bee friendly zones in our wild meadow section, or hosting wellness meetings in our open green spaces. In order to maintain the garden, we need to purchase annual plants and bulbs together with compost and bark. 

Crieff Community Gardeners host free family events throughout the year- our first one of 2025 being an Easter celebration with an egg hunt and games. These events require catering, crafts and activities, as well as marquee hire and prizes. 

Overview: Wonderland is a community-based initiative devised by Adventure Circus SCIO in 2024. Wonderland’s aim is to bringing free outdoor circus performances and workshops to local parks in Perthshire. The project focuses on engaging children and families, particularly those from low-income areas, offering them the opportunity to experience live circus entertainment and actively participate in circus skills training within their own community (Perth), out of doors during the summer holidays. 

Our goals: 

• Access to the Arts during cost of living crisis: we want to provide children and families in low-income / semi-rural areas with the chance to see a professional circus performance, something that may otherwise be financially out of reach. 
• Skill Development: we love to share what we do, and so our performances always include an element of participation to encourage children to engage in circus skills. For example our performers will help members of the public to try juggling, hula hooping, and aerial arts, promoting physical activity, creativity and self-confidence. 
• Community Building: Our visits are intended to offer a community activity that brings local people together for a fun, inclusive and interactive experience. As an outdoor spectacle, there is no limit to the number of people who can attend. In 2024 we performed Wonderland in Perth to approximately 150 people of all ages. 
• Wellbeing Focus: It is our long term aim that our Wonderland events provoke audience members to consider taking part in circus skills, either through our education programme, or through self practise. Circus arts have a well known reputation for improving mental/emotional wellbeing due to a long history of inclusivity, and the skills offer an opportunity for self-expression, resilience and crucially for young people, play. 

Key Activities: 

• Outdoor Circus Show: Our professional circus performers will put on an engaging outdoor show that is family-friendly and accessible to all ages.  The show is based on Alice in Wonderland and so the story concept is recognisable to many people because of it’s well known characters and timeless themes such as curiosity, exploration, personal growth, absurdity and nonsense! 

• Taster Sessions: After the performance, children and adults will be invited to try their hand at various circus skills like juggling, hula hooping and aerial hoop workshops led by the circus performers. Participants will be encouraged to experiment and learn. 

• Community Involvement: Alongside our performers, local volunteers from Adventure Circus, including our young leaders, will assist with workshop delivery and gain valuable community experience. We will spend time getting to know local people and can encourage them to join us, continue to practise independently. 

Target Audience: 

• Children aged 3-14, particularly those from lower-income backgrounds who may not experience many special activities / experiences due to the cost of living crisis and limitations of the family budget 

• Families and community members who may not typically access large-scale entertainment or arts events because they cannot afford to attend or because they do not have the means to travel out with their area due to limitations of public transport / cost. 

Benefits: 

• For Children: Encourages physical activity and boosts confidence and resilience through fun, engaging experiences. 

• For Families: Provides a free, inclusive arts/circus experience that brings joy for all the family and introduces new ways to engage in physical activity. 

• For all: floor skills such as juggling and hula hooping are extremely low cost and are accessible beyond our Wonderland experiences through our community classes, or through self exploration at home using resources such as youtube/TikTok/Instagram 

• For the Community: Strengthens local connections Adventure Circus has within different areas throughout Perth & Kinross and helps to create lasting memories by bringing a positive, uplifting event to the community. 

Outcomes: 

With your help, we will be helping to increase access to the arts for children in underserved areas, we will encourage/enhance physical and mental wellbeing through creative circus play and we will help to strengthen community cohesion and pride in local parks as venues for cultural and recreational activities. 

By bringing the magic of the circus directly to the community, Wonderland creates a free, accessible opportunity for children to see, learn, and play, and best of all, it is all set up right in their own parkland!

Video: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17929916303875766/

Our club has always demonstrated our values which are to provide a safe, fun and inclusive netball club. We have always ensured that our girls understand the benefits of how having an active lifestyle can only bring positive outcomes for their physical and mental health. It also helps our girls from the different schools across our area to make real connections and friendships away from the ever increasing dependency children have on social media. Perth City Juniors were re-established in 2021 and since then we have managed to obtain success in the form of twice winning the Netball Scotland Scottish Youth Cup along with many netball leagues throughout Scotland and across all of our age groups. We also have some girls who have gone on to represent Scotland. The costs involved in playing netball competitively can put a financial burden onto parents therefore our committee have always strived to fundraise so that we can keep our fees low. 

We have a culture of giving back at our club with many of our older girls volunteering their time to help coach sessions at the club as well as within their secondary schools. Many of them have obtained coaching qualifications along with becoming umpires. With this in mind, we'd like to continue this by giving back to our communities. 

We are hoping that with a successful funding application, we can deliver free netball sessions within local primary schools. We would like to coordinate with the headteachers and Active schools coordinators to offer 4 weekly sessions to be held either in school hours or as an after school club. 

Our hope is that by offering these sessions, we can encourage the children to subsequently be involved in playing netball at the many clubs in Perth & Kinross. Showing that no matter what their socioeconomic background is, there is accessible netball available to everyone. Following these free taster sessions, we'd hope to hold some holiday camps to benefit all netball players in the area. The funding would also allow us to upskill our coaches and equipment so that we could deliver a high quality holiday camp catering to girls of differing levels of netball ability.   

We have witnessed first hand the positive impact that being involved in this team sport, can allow our girls to thrive, be successful and boost their confidence. We hope that our application will be successful to allow us to include more girls who will benefit from our club.