We are a community brass band organisation based in Dreghorn. We run 3 bands (a contest brass band, a community and a youth band) and we provide free or low cost after school music lessons for young people. We have over 100 members in our organisation and thousands of people are entertained by us each year at gala days, Christmas events and community concerts. We also support fundraising of other charities. People who participate in our bands and our audiences obtain mental well-being and educational benefits from musical activity. Each year we compete in several brass band contests and festivals all over Scotland. Any funding obtained would go towards our (2025) travel costs, entry costs, and other costs for competitions such as music, extra rehearsals etc. Participating in these event will inspires, motivates and develops our players, entertains audiences and we also represent North Ayrshire in an important cultural events.

We are applying for £1,000 for our adult groups competing costs

Cost breakdown would be:

• Travel cost subsidies – bus hire £600
• Entry fees - £200
• Music, extra rehearsal costs - £200

Each year we compete at the Scottish Brass Band Championships in Perth (March 2025) and for this contest alone a bus costs c. £700 and other costs (music, entry, rehearsals) c. £500. As we attend 3 - 4 contests per year the costs incurred for all competitions is c. £3,000. Contests / festivals are important for our groups development and the band would fundraise or meet the gap from reserves.  

With the funding, we hope to host 2 networking events to attract members to join the community council. The community council works in partnership with several other voluntary organisations across Irvine such as Friends of Redburn, Fullarton Community Association, Marymass Festival Committee and others to run events in the locality and generally foster good relations between groups. By hosting these network meetings, we hope to attract new committee members who can increase our capacity to put on events and build community spirit between voluntary organisations.

The community council previously hosted the Irvine Yuletide event in 2023 which attracted around 10,000 people to Irvine moor. This gave families a chance to take part in free festive activities at a time of year when the cost of living hits hardest. If we can attract new volunteers to the community council, we will be able to put on more events similar to this, bringing people together and creating positive change in the community.

Costing as follows: 2 events 6 months apart

Rent of venue - £200

Promotion, including paid for advertising social media £100

Catering £700 (2 events, 70 people, £5 a head.)

TOTAL - £1000

The Parents Wellbeing and Health Event will be open to parents of young children and will be inclusive of the following activities to promote physical and mental wellbeing; introduction to yoga and mindfulness, introduction to PT for mental health, havening session an how to increase the resilence of Parents and their Children. A breakdown of the costs below 

- introduction to yoga and milndfullness £250 

- Havening session £250 

- Intro to PT for mental health benifits £250 

- Resilence session £100

- Refreshments £100

- Hall hire £50

It has been proven that engaging with photography can have a dramatic and positive impact on one's mental health.  It encourages mindfullness and fulfilment.  It can be a solitary activity but it can also be practised in the company of others in a social setting.

Irvine Camera Club (ICC) has a proven record of working with vulnerable people to deliver positive mental health outcomes.  Our latest initiative was a collaboration with Ayrshire & Arran NHS to provide photography workshops for patients in recovery in order to give them a new focus in their lives.  This was very successful.  We are also an active contributor to the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival.  We work closely with NAC Arts & Culture Team team to support their wider activities and to provide photography services for their activities. Our proposal is that ICC will host a series of photowalks during the summer of 2025, on weekday evenings and at weekends.  These walks will be free for anyone to attend and will mainly take place North Ayrshire.  We intend to advertise the walks on social media.  We will use our regular pages in the Irvine Herald to advertise the photowalks, again at no cost.

The club has the facilities to gather the submissions and to evalutate them.  ICC will self fund modest prizes for their chosen overall winner and runners up.  

The costs of this project will be in the production of gallery edge-to-edge prints to be displayed at the HAC.  We estimate that this will be in the region of £20 for printed artwork on A2 foamex board.  We would aim to curate and exhibit 50 images at the HAC.

The overal funding required is therefore £1000. 

Once the exhibition at the HAC has finished the art work will be available to be exhibited at other venues across North Ayrshire.

Our voluntary group aims to promote social inclusion, mental health and wellbeing, physical activity and community service. We promote these aims within the group and, through our activities, to improve accessibility Eglinton Park's core pathways for all users.

Our work is in addition to, and  goes above and beyond, the routine maintenance and repairs of the park as provided by Streetscene and North Ayrshire Ranger Service.

Our aim is to continue to improve the work that we are doing around Eglinton Park and also to grow our group. To be able to do this we need to replace existing worn out tools and upgrade our toolset to improve our offering to all users of Eglinton Park's core pathways and the community of North Ayrshire.

We are applying for funding to help us to promote the aims of the group as noted.

Tools that would help us to achieve our aims, with associated costings:-

Galvanised Wheelbarrow (x3) £270

Cordless Chainsaw (x1) £200

Ratchet Lopper Shears (x5) £150

Digging Spades (x5) £90

Round Spades (x5)  £90

Extendable Tree Lopper (x1) £60

Heavy Duty Brushes (x3) £75

PPE, Gloves/Goggles (x12) £60

Barnardo's Stronger Families provides support across North Ayrshire to Kinship families. We have funding in place for core staff to facilitate groups, sessions and activities however we require funding to provide for resources, refreshments and if we wish to work with local artists. We worked with local artists recently on graffiti projects and creative arts groups with young people and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Those young people recommended that other young people and adults get to experience groups/sessions similar to those that they took part in. Benefits of creative arts sessions are socialisation, reducing isolation, positive communication, learning new skills and discovering artisitic talents. It can build confdence and self-esteem. For Kinship carers it will allow them to take some time for themselves, relax, spend time with other people in a similar situation to them and to build up positive peer relationships and supportive networks. For Kinship families to take part in sessions together, it will allow them to spend quality time as a family, having fun, communicating, supporting each other and relaxing together. Barnardo's will provide the staffing and promotional materials for these sessions.

Costs for 10 sessions:

Venue hire - £150 (2 hours per session)

Refreshments - £100

Creative arts resources - £450

Local artist time - £300

Trindlemoss Day Opportunities is based in Irvine. Trindlemoss aims to transform community attitudes to better support and promote opportunities for people with learning disabilities and address mental health. We will help individuals share their strengths and skills with the community and encourage recognition for their input.

Throughout all our work, we stay focused on our customers, and the relationships that support and enrich them.

The group would like to organise social events in the evenings to utilise the building in the evening and invite parents, carers, family and friends to participate monthly to begin with to meet up with a long-term goal of making it a weekly meet up depending on how many family and friends would like to support this .

This would encourage a peer support group where the adults with learning disabilities would have the opportunity to meet up with their friends and socialise in the evening. The group would also give parents and carers, family and other care supports the opportunity to make friends and meet up with other parents and carers and support workers who support people with learning disabilities.

Trindlemoss also have residents who would also benefit from social events it would give them the opportunity to meet their neighbours.

The criteria we meet is Health and Wellbeing as Friends of Trindlemoss would promote physical and mental wellbeing the project would address social isolation, bring the community together.

The people who reside in the houses have mental health and learning disabilities so we also hit the criteria for building community spirits as we want to create a venue that is also an environment that they know. We also have other groups who use our building like Healing Hearts who have also shown an interest in volunteering, befriending, and helping  at Friends of Trindlemoss community events.

We would like to hold social events in the evening as winter is nearly here our Focus group have asked if we can put in for funding for the following items. With the following items we can have the oppertunity to fund raise ourselves and have games nights, bingo nights and fun nights. 

 Wireless  PA System - £200

pool table - £420

Curryoke Night - £260  Social event for 80 people (Curry, poppodoms, Rice) Pizza's for non curry lovers & refreshments for Tikka Bar

Entertainment  DJ - £100

In March our cricket square and cricket wickets are fully refurbished after our end of season repairs and regrowing and replenishment project. In April we cut and manicure them to allow cricket matches to take place for both juniors and seniors. The area is also used for training and game development. As the season progresses we are maintaining, reparing every wicket used through the methods mentioned above. After the work is complete we use our cricket covers to help speed up the process of germination, keep it dry and free of wind. After this has happenned we then start the same process on the next cricket wiicket, that has been used for games, to allow us to constantly maintain and repair and cause as less damage to the land as possbile. This process lasts until the end of August. In September we then do an overall deep scarify, re-dress the whole area reseed and fertilise the whole area in preperation for the next season.

The members of the club are heavily involved in this project with us, regenerating, regrowing and maximising the area we have, doing as much as we can by hand, labour and to be as green as we possibly can. The cricket wicket covers are in 3 sections that cost £2000 brand new. These last the club 10+ years. These covers are a key part of the work we are able to do on the ground and allow us to continue to play the sport and keep the area workable, renewable and fit for purpose. These covers have been badly damaged in recent high winds, the wheels are buckled and broken, the tops have become ripped, perished and the waterproof tops are no longer doing their job. These covers can be split into 3 areas for growth and regeneration or together as one to protect cricket wickets for matches. We currently have £1100 towards this project and the £900 would allow us to replace in February 2025 for the new season.

At Crossing Together Toddlers we aim to provide a fun, warm, safe, welcoming and accessible space for babies and toddlers to come along with their grown-ups from Bourtreehill and the surrounding areas of Irvine.  In setting up the group we initially looked at accessing funding to purchase equipment and toys however a toddler group in Troon had recently folded and they gifted us items that meant we could launch the group immediately. The group is free of charge to families to access and weekly snacks and craft materials are provided through donations and fundraising.  It is important for us to maintain a no charge policy to maximise accessibility due to the cost of living crisis and our locality being significantly impacted with regards poverty.  Weekly snacks provided are balanced with items like fruit, toast and juice/water being provided for the children and a warm drink and biscuits for the grown-ups.  As well as the weekly sessions we want to provide the families with new experiences that can include their older children and partners which will extend the community spirit that is being built in and around the group already.  These new experiences include family fun days, parties, trips and days out locally and further afield. 

Many of the families who attend the group rarely travel outwith Irvine and it would be great to improve the health and wellbeing through a summer trip to a farm park, which would provide a new experience by seeing the animals we sing about and read about at our weekly song and story time.  A Christmas Party with entertainment, hospitality and a visit from Santa would also encourage positive mental health during the festive time that brings much stress with extra financial outgoing in winter.  A weekend family fun day using the local park space would enable us to include working parents and older children and through hospitality/food and fun activities create a positive aspect to a park area that carries much saddness in the community and encourage resislience and new owership of the local space. 

For Crossing Together to provide these experiences at no cost to the families in our locality we would be applying for the PB Locality Funding to help meet these costs as well as doing additional fundraising and seeking donations.

Examples of costings to provide such experiences are:-

Farm park admission (approx 80 people includes under 2s free) = £625

Childrens Party Entertainer = £125

Gifting from Santa (approx 40 gifts) = £120

Hospitality Party/Funday = £130

Additional costings for items like craft materials and additional hospitality would be sought through donations and fundraising.