Saltcoats Mindful Makers

Investment project code: 775

Location: Saltcoats Mindful Makers’ catchment area is the Three Towns – Saltcoats, Ardrossan and Stevenston – and Ayrshire’s rich history, beautiful coastline and cultural amenities provide inspiration for our crafting and book group activities. This area returns high scores in many key indicators of deprivation, and this has been well documented (North Ayrshire Health and Wellbeing Profiles, www.scotpho.org.uk, and Three Towns, North Ayrshire Community Planning Partnership, www.northayrshire.community). In ‘Description’ above we have outlined steps we take to combat deprivation-associated depression because of loneliness and financial stresses, and to encourage our members to take responsibility for their health and wellbeing. Mindful Makers activities are widely embedded in the Three Towns community. For example: Mindful Makers’ Book Group has been experimenting with trialling various outside-the-box approaches to increase inclusivity, and we recently celebrated our county by each finding and presenting a book and a poem associated with Ayrshire. We have linked with other groups to add value as and where we can and we participate in community outreach; for instance, in 2023 we were invited to dress a Christmas tree at the Festival of Trees in Kirkgate Parish Church, Saltcoats. We spent several productive weeks creating ‘Eight Maids a’Milking’ decorations for our donated tree on the overall theme of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, all enjoyed by the local community, congregation and carollers. We have been invited back to participate in 2024. We will support the Kirkgate annual Craft Fayre again this year and, if they go ahead, the CLASP/HOPE craft event at Hayocks Community Centre, Stevenston. A very successful Mindful Makers outreach spin-off has been a 4-week practical book-binding course held at CLASP/HOPE in Stevenston, researched and led by a Mindful Makers volunteer organiser. An additional activity carried out under the Mindful Makers umbrella is a bi-annual double-session mental health awareness workshop. These workshops have been a notable success, so we will be combining activities to promote mental health and mindfulness together with Scotland’s Climate Week in September 2024. We will be working on an on-going portable project entitled ‘The Green Dress’ which we will use to raise awareness of our group across the Three Towns, and our approach to supporting mental health, wellbeing, and respect for our environment. In July 2024 we invited our local councillors to attend a crafting session to make them aware of our group’s purpose and activities. We were delighted and encouraged by their very positive response, with one councillor staying on and joining in. The link between loneliness and poor health outcomes is well documented – at a time when we all need to be taking responsibility for our own wellbeing, Mindful Makers provides an accessible opportunity for us to do exactly this.

• Locality Health and Wellbeing