Our karate club is based in Irvine is well established and open to all. We practice in the Redburn and Castlepark community centres on Mondays, Wednesday and Saturdays. We have c. 150 members that benefit from our classes and we support physical and mental health. Our members are in all age groups and many are from deprived areas and challenged by the cost of living. Many of our members attend competitions all over the UK and we try to keep our costs low and support people so that everyone can take part. For example we already subsidise karate suits, competition entry fees etc. We’d be grateful for any funding and money would go towards equipment and suit subsidies, subsidising entry costs and occasional travel to competitions.

Estimated breakdown would be:

-        Equipment (mats, punchbags, T-shirts, etc) - £400

-        Suit subsidies – 40 suits x £10 subsidy = £400

-        Entrance fees subsidies, we pay £1600 roughly in entrance fees  – £200 

The ongoing increase to food is making it harder for Choices Community Shop to maintain a full range of produce. The grant will allow for the current range of products to be continued, especially through the depth of winter, when people have to choose whether to heat or eat. 

Our older community of people are reliant on Choices Community Matters and we want to ensure that can have at least 3 good meals from what they purchase so this funding will go on the purchase of food to ensure that choice, value and dignity are preserved. Tackling food insecurity is our way of reducing poverty in our immediate community.

Food (tinned, frozen and fresh) £1000 made up of:

Ambient Food (soups, hotdogs, potatoes, peas, sweetcorn,tea, coffee, sugar, juice, stews, curry, pasta, pasta sauce, rice) - £500

Frozen Food (Veg, ready meals, chips, pizza, fish, sausages etc) £250

Fresh (milk, eggs, cheese, mince, chicken. yoghurt, ) £250

Prices in supermarkets vary so an exact order is difficult to price until the day of the order. However, tinned and long life products will make up the main purchase of the foods.

Irvine Clean Up Crew is looking to continue and even increase our engagement with local schools and other community groups as we continue to promote messages of being responsible with our rubbish to protect the environment for the future. We currently have one class-sized kit of litter pickers, but often receive requests for more than one class to be out using our equipment at the one time. We also receive requests for longer term loans for environmental projects that we are currently unable to support. We are always delighted when schools and community groups reach out to us for support with litter picking activities so we would like to increase our equipment capacity so that we can support as many requests as possible. Our volunteer school’s co-ordinator will continue to provide support for litter picks and also provides opportunities to talk about the impact of litter. Seeing 41year old crisp packets generally starts some lively discussions! We also have a story that was written by two of our volunteers that is already available for schools to use in pdf format. We would like to get some copies of "Sandy's Big Adventure" printed, so that we have copies accessible for others to use out of a school setting.

We would like to use funds from the participatory budget to help us purchase another class size kit of litter pickers, hi-vis vests, gloves and buckets. We also want to arrange a school tour of our rescued "Tiger" to help share messages of being responsible with items you no longer want or need and encouraging repair/reuse rather than throwing items in the bin. Tiger (who is about to be renamed in a community competition) was rescued from the River Irvine looking worse for wear. A good wash and tidy up later and he's back to being super cuddly again. We think offering him to schools with his story and an opportunity to contribute to his ongoing adventure will encourage more conversations and promote ideas about how we can all do more to create less waste.

To help us continue to inspire the local community to take more positive action for the environment we would ask for the following:

30 x child size litter pickers: £360

5 x adult pickers: £95

30 x buckets: £60

30 x child size hi-vis vests: £150

30 x child size gloves: £110

Stationery and delivery costs to help support Tiger's school tour: £75

Printing costs for "Sandy's Big Adventure": £150

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

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.

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.

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

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.