Dumfries and Galloway flourishing with wind farm support

The Blackcraig Wind Farm Community Fund was established in 2019 to benefit the residents of ten Community Council areas, eight in the geographic area surrounding Loch Ken in the northern part of the Stewartry, Dumfries and Galloway, known as the Glenkens, and two Community Council areas bordering on the Glenkens in the adjacent area of Nithsdale.

The decision-making body for the Blackcraig Wind Farm Community Fund is the Glenkens & District Trust (GDT). The Fund has provided support for an array of projects across 2023 and 2024.

During this time, two awards were made to the Glenkens Community & Arts Trust, the first of which was for £15,880 to develop, build and maintain the Glenkens Hub, a new website for the community.

The award was a response to an action highlighted in the 2020 Glenkens & District Community Action Plan - to 'invest in an effective communication tool for the whole community'. In 2021, work was commissioned by Glenkens and District Trust and delivered by the Glenkens Community & Arts Trust (GCAT) to consult with local people and organisations and identify options to develop this communication tool for the community of Glenkens.

Following on from this, in early 2022 GCAT was awarded £15,880 to develop the Glenkens Hub, a new website for the community. During the course of the year the Hub website was built and launched in March 2023 at www.glenkens.scot.

The Hub aims to meet the needs of residents, organisations and businesses across the Glenkens, featuring news stories, events, a community noticeboard and information from community groups, village halls and Community Councils. Local reports and resources are brought together in one place, and the Hub hosts the online version of the high valued printed newsletter also delivered by GCAT, the Glenkens Gazette. 

The Hub has brought together a range of information previously scattered across a range of on and offline resources and  met a need for smaller groups who may not want or be able to develop their own websites to have a dedicated online space, bringing information together under one roof efficiently and effectively.

It's fantastic to see one of the key priorities that the communities set out in 2020 coming to fruition in such an accessible and useful way. Many thanks are due to all who worked and volunteered on it — it's been a real team effort!

Helen Keron, Executive Manager of GCAT

The second award made to Glenkens Community & Arts Trust, was for £19,976, for their Community Spaces Network project, to fund two years’ salary costs for a freelance co-ordinator for the project.

Glenkens Community Spaces Network (GCSN) was created by GCAT in 2023 to provide a forum for management committees of village halls, town halls, community centres and other community spaces to come together to share ideas, successes and issues. The Network meets every other month, visiting a different community venue.

Following consultation with representatives of 20 community spaces, seven network meetings were held with four featuring guest speakers. These were attended by members of 14 community spaces committees across the Glenkens.

The Network’s purpose is to bring these voluntary committees together for peer support, to encourage partnership working and to amplify their efforts. As an example of the benefits of this work, Dalry Community Council has sourced funding from NatureScot and SOSE to undertake work on Local Place Planning, one strand of which involves the GCSN Facilitator working with Dalry and Carsphairn Community Councils to complete a draft Local Place Plan for consultation and to produce resources to support the other Community Councils in the Glenkens with Local Place Planning work. The NatureScot funding for this work ended in March 2024, but the work on Local Place Planning will continue through 2024.

Everyone has found that by meeting regularly, much common ground has been found. Issues facing us have been discussed and I think the feeling that you are ‘not on your own’ is one of the main positives to come out of the meeting and that Becca (GCSN Facilitator) is able to take forward joint concerns and look for solutions is of great benefit.

Community Venue Representative

A further award of £3,026 was made to Crichton Carbon Centre for their ‘Biosphere Explorers’ project, to promote Biosphere Explorers resource packs to help increase primary school pupils understanding of climate change, biodiversity and sustainability. 

The Crichton Carbon Centre focusses on peatland restoration, carbon management, sustainable land use and environmental education. Biosphere Explorers is a project that uses the local frame of the Galloway and Southern Ayrshire Biosphere to teach pupils about climate change, biodiversity, and sustainability. Glenkens & District Trust supported the Centre to deliver this project to primary schools in the area of benefit (P4-7). Nine sessions were delivered to 165 pupils and a session was also delivered to a group of 30 teachers in their role as climate champions. 

Overall, teachers were supported to deliver high quality teaching on the natural world and climate education and pupils’ understanding of climate change and their own local biosphere environment was increased.

Blackcraig Windfarm Fund allowed us to engage with schools that we hadn't been able to deliver sessions to for years (or ever) and the appreciation of the teachers and pupils was clear. They were all such rewarding sessions, and we hope the pupils understand more about their local area and Galloway and Southern Ayrshire Biosphere thanks to the pack. Genuinely, each session was so fun to deliver and the enthusiasm of the pupils was really infectious.

Carys Mainprize, Education Officer