Castletown Community

The objective of the Adaptive and Collaborative Communities team (ACC)  is to support and start projects in the Castletown community, working with:

• The Castletown Youth Club
• The Castletown Community Hub – ‘e Peedie Cafe
• The football Club
• The Castletown and District Community Council

The community are also looking at creating a Castletown Community Development Trust.

The projects are to be supported by ACC who will then hand over the ‘active’ projects to the community when their contract ends in March 2022.

The ACC team will work with and support the Castletown community during this period and work alongside the community groups to achieve their goals.

• For the ACC team to support the Castletown community in achieving projects goals.
• To offer advice and support and help with funding applications.
• To look at ways of supporting and helping the wider community.
• To create projects that can have a lasting effect on the Castletown community and be continued by the community groups and or Development Trust, once the ACC contract ends, March 2022.

The Castletown Youth club

ACC has helped the Youth Club to acquire funding for a greenhouse project which will allow its members to take part in growing projects. They have also successfully won funding bits to help the club reopen again after the pandemic by providing funding for equipment, furniture and PPE.

Awards for All Lottery Funding (July 2021)

The Awards for All Community Fund by the National Lottery awarded the Castletown Youth Club with £6612

This funding will allow the club to build a greenhouse and develop green projects with the club members.

Supporting Community Resilience Highland Council Funding (June 2021)

The Highland Council awarded the Castletown Youth Club £1,299.69

This funding will help provide for essential PPE equipment which has supported the club reopening to the public.

Caithness Cares: Youth Group Funding (June 2021) awarded the Castletown Youth Club £1200

This funding has helped the club to buy the crucial equipment to reopen the club after restrictions had eased from the pandemic.

ACC have also introduced the youth club the Caithness Cares Project:

“Caithness Cares is a whole community approach to improving mental health for young people. Caithness supports Caithness by reducing stigma surrounding mental health, offering training and information on organisations and services to support wellbeing.”

ACC and the youth club joined the ‘Youth sub Group’ of Caithness Cares which helped to build relationships with other statutory and community groups working and supporting the youth of Caithness. From these meetings, ACC set up a meeting with Highlife Highland to look into the possibility of them providing the club with a children’s activity officer.

The club now has an activities officer who attends every Friday evening from Highlife Highland. Their relationship is ongoing.

ACC will continue to support the Castletown Youth Club with ongoing and future projects.

The Castletown Community Hub – ‘e Peedie Café

The ‘e Peedie Café currently remains closed until the community and volunteers of the café feel the time is right to reopen.

ACC will help the Café to support community members in regaining independence, by maintaining services such as shopping and pharmacy deliveries, food parcels, or befriending as long as they’re required, even if it were to be just for one person.

To increase provision, they’ll need a greater pool of volunteers to create sustainable capacity, once the Café is open again ACC will support them in achieving their goals, starting projects and offering advice on funding.

The Castletown football Club

ACC is supporting the football club to acquire funding to refurbish the clubhouse.

ACC will continue to advise on funding applications and help with any project planning once the club are successful in gaining the funds they require.

Castletown and District Community Council (CDCC)

The ACC team are looking into finding land in Castletown to help the CDCC to create an allotment. Talks have been held with Alan Donn who has been relaying information from John Russel the owner of North Frost. John Russell owns several bits of land in Castletown that could be a possibility for community development. Talks are ongoing.

There is the possibility of purchasing land from George Campbell who is also a landowner in Castletown. He has offered to do a community buy out for £40,000. This is possibly a larger project that could be undertaken by the ‘future’ Development Trust.

ACC is also helping the CDCC to source funding to repair a wall at the harbour. There are several other wishes that the CDCC have to improve the community such as flower bed options and dinosaur trails through the small forest in the village.

ACC is supporting the CDCC with sourcing funding as well as planning for projects.

Castletown Community Development Trust

Penny and Colin Gunn, Donna Kirk and Emma Manson are leading the way in creating a development trust for Castletown

Penny and Colin run the local young club and Donna and Emma are campaigning for road safety measures besides the children’s play park on Main Street.

As well as having the support of the ACC team and Caithness Voluntary Group they also have the support of Joan Lawrie of Thurso Community Development Trust and Highland Councillor Karl Rosie.

ACC will continue to help the community with any funding, project proposals, volunteer recruitment or support that they require.