We are delighted to introduce Sophie Palmer, our first AIA Youth Leader. Sophie is a familiar face to many AIA supporters as she has been volunteering with us for the last 12 years. In this new role Sophie is keen to develop a youth section to support young people with volunteering and their wellbeing in the community:

‘I have been helping out at the AIA since I was in P1 (12 years ago!). I really enjoy helping people and having things to do. I value the opportunities that the AIA have given me and the connections that I’ve
made while volunteering. Volunteering for the AIA has given me a reason to get off my phone and out of the house while also making new friends, improving both my mental and physical wellbeing.
Alongside helping with the AIA I have volunteered as a prefect and a wellbeing ambassador at Waid Academy which allows me to support the teachers and students around the school. I have also become better at public speaking as my work with the AIA has involved me giving talks to members of the public at events like Doors Open Day. Through volunteering with the AIA I have become more connected with the whole community as I’ve had the opportunity to be educated by them while helping out at Anster Nichts and educate them through Doors Open Day, as well as getting to talk to them at events and learn about their lives and interests. I am currently developing a youth section for the AIA to support young people with volunteering and their wellbeing in the community.’

You can find out more about AIA volunteering for young people aged 12 – 25yrs here. If you have would like to get in touch, please email our community development worker, Julia Priestley on julia@anstrutherimprovements.org.

You can view the latest Dreel Burn newsletter here.

The popular craft group, Dreel Crafters, now meets twice a week on Tuesday evenings and Thursday afternoons

The National Lottery Community Fund has confirmed a further three years of funding, a total of £133,373,  for Anstruther Improvements Association (AIA) to continue our successful Anster Community Development Project (ACDP). The project was set up with Lottery funding in 2021, at the tail end of the Covid-19 pandemic, and enabled us to employ our first member of staff, a community development worker. The project has broadened the range of activities and events that the AIA offers, as part of our vision to support a thriving and resilient community. The project is directly responsible for attracting additional funding of more than £500,000 to the area.

We launched the initiative during the pandemic, responding to local need with a new early years group for first-time parents who were unable to access any other support at the time. After the pandemic, the project focused on rebuilding the AIA’s former programme and growing it further, so that it now includes a monthly community cinema, an evening lecture series, regular coffee mornings for all ages and two weekly craft groups. These are alongside bigger annual events, such as the AIA’s popular duck race at Easter and Vintage Day in October. These and other events and activities provide over 100 volunteering experiences for local residents, enabling them to share or develop skills and connect with others. Volunteers are also at the heart of the Dreel Burn Project and the Shelled Wall Project, both community-led initiatives that were established by us as part of the ACDP. 

AIA Chair Christine Palmer said: “With this grant The National Lottery Community Fund is recognising what the Anster Community Development Project has brought to our community in its first three years. We are enormously grateful to the Fund and to the National Lottery players, and excited to take the project forward over the next three years, building on our success.”

We have issued a plea in local media for donations of shells to save an East Neuk listed building. Thousands of dog whelks are needed in order for us to restore to its former glory the decorated shell wall of a neighbouring property overlooking the Dreel Burn. 

The gable wall was originally elaborately covered with shells by the slater, Alexander Batchelor, who also decorated the well-known Buckie House just across the road. The building is an important part of Anstruther’s heritage, the wall has been slowly deteriorating over recent years and is currently in a very poor state. We require permission from the owners of the adjoining building to undertake much needed restoration work. To date no relatives of the late Mr and Mrs Wallace, who lived there, have come forward. We are asking that anyone with information regarding the property owners get in contact by emailing julia@anstrutherimprovements.org.

AIA Trustee, Elizabeth Riches said: “We need many thousands of small white dogwhelks for our community-led restoration project, an objective which will take some time to achieve. King Charles expressed considerable interest in our local shell-covered buildings while on a visit a few years ago and was particularly pleased that local children were involved in collecting shells for the Buckie House restoration. If you can help us in any way, either with information about the Wallaces, or by collecting dogwhelks for us, the AIA would be most grateful.” 

We have placed a collection box at the terrace to the rear of Dreel Halls where members of the public can donate shells they have collected. You can also contact us via our Facebook page for the Dreel Shelled Wall Project.

Look out also for our regular family-friendly Buckie Treasure Hunts on local beaches, with the next event at Castle Beach, Anstruther on Saturday 27th April at 10am.

The results of our Anster Community Development Project Survey are in and you can now read the full report, prepared by Julia Priestley, the AIA’s Community Development Worker, and volunteer Sarah Bradley.

The report can be read and downloaded here.

The survey will provide the Trustees and Julia with information on where to take the Anster Community Development Project next. It is also a really useful evaluation tool for the AIA and the project’s inaugural funders, The National Lottery Community Fund. Finally, it provides evidence of impact as the AIA tries to get the next stage of the project funded.

Date: 20th March 2024
Time: 10:30 am
Location: Dreel Burn and Dreel Halls

Quack quack!

Here we go! We will be launching 1,000 rubber ducks into Dreel Burn and cheering them on as they race to the finish line!

You can sponsor a duck at shops in town (look out for a duck in the window) for £2.

Brilliant prizes to be won – you’d have to be quackers to miss it 🙂

Weather permitting, prize giving will be from the terrace at the back of Dreel Halls. All funds raised from the race go to the AIA for our events and activities and the upkeep of the halls.

https://www.facebook.com/events/822378812938150

2022 saw the AIA back in the swing of things, with Julia Priestley, the AIA’s first Community Development Worker, fully in her stride. The Anster Community Development Project went from strength to strength, with a full programme of events and activities to appeal to our community.

We completed our season of Anster Nichts at the start of the year with talks by Kirsty Strachan (Gaelic in Anstruther), Eugene Clark and Kirsty Ryder (Levenmouth Rail Campaign) and Joanna Hambly (Archaeology of the Fife Coast). The new season began in September with talks by Steve Liscoe (WWII Defences of Fife), local film-maker Bill Bruce (Different Video), and Michael Bruce and Roy Giles (RNLI). Our thanks to our generous speakers, who give up their time to educate and entertain us.

Anster Cinema tested the water in February with a cinema takeover by the Anstruther Skatepark Group. The group curated an evening of short skate films to raise awareness of the skatepark project. A month later Anster Cinema was back with regular monthly film screenings at Dreel Halls, usually on the first Sunday of the month at 6.45pm. The cinema closed the year with a partnership screening with East Neuk Arts, a new local initiative, trialling a family-friendly Christmas film to appeal to new audiences.

There was great excitement at the return of the Duck Race, and it was wonderful to bring back our favourite event of the year. We held the prize giving and bonnet parade outdoors to avoid concerns about indoor crowds, and fortunately the weather held for us. We repeated the Design a Duck colouring competition, promoting it at Bowhouse Food Market to gain a wider range of entries from participants outwith the East Neuk. Local businesses distributed the colouring sheets and encouraged people to display these in their windows around Anstruther. Local artist, Jilly Ballantyne, kindly judged the competition and young volunteers organised a display of entries at the Duck Race for all to enjoy.

The early years social group, established in 2021, Dreel Babies & Toddlers, continued to meet weekly, with a waiting list due to the group’s reputation and popularity. The group now operates with a core group of regular volunteers to organise and facilitate weekly activities. There is a focus on literacy and music activities, and the group has included organised buggy walks, a library visit, picnics, indoor age-appropriate activities, sharing stories, music, craft activities and celebration events.

Dreel Friends, our popular community café, provides space for members of our community to meet and socialise and keep in touch with community activities. We offer teas, home baking, a book swap, stories for younger children and a seasonal, themed craft table each month. The group is supported by regular volunteers and provides a hub to share information.

We launched a new weekly craft group, Dreel Crafters, in 2022, providing opportunities to meet, share crafting skills and volunteer. Members of the group contributed knitting to raise funds for the AIA Duck Race and, with Julia’s support, revived a fantastically successful and fun Vintage Day.  Dreel Halls hosted traditional vintage teas, a handmade quilt display by our Honorary Patron, Christine Keay, vintage jewellery, clothing and craft stalls, charity stalls and a raffle. A great time was had by visitors and volunteers.

Our project to restore the shelled, decorative surface of a local heritage building (the Dreel Shelled Wall Restoration Project) is still in its early stages; in 2022 the focus was on asking the public to collect enough shells to complete the work. We organised a Buckie Treasure Hunt, attended community events to promote the project and established a Facebook group.  Jilly Ballantyne created a beautiful East Neuk Shells postcard to help members of the public identify local shells, to share information about the heritage project and to encourage shell collection.

2022 saw the public launch of the AIA’s Dreel Burn Project, with ambitious aims to restore the burn, making it once again a clean, biodiverse and vibrant waterway. We are partnering with Forth Rivers Trust, Fife Coast & Countryside Trust, Footprint East Neuk and St Andrews University to coordinate this complex project with its many stakeholders. Following community information and consultation events, we were able to recruit a group of committed volunteers to provide monthly citizen science water testing activity and regular litter picks on the burn. The project is supported by a working group and a steering group.

The AIA continued to participate in the East Neuk’s Family Learning Roadshows, and we were pleased for the opportunity to host the summer event at Dreel Halls. We took part in the East Neuk Youth Network, which enabled us to provide community volunteering to Waid Academy students completing their Duke of Edinburgh Award. Waid Academy students were also the focus of Musomanix, a youth music project delivered by AIA Trustee Alan Stewart, and local songwriter and musician, King Creosote, with young people able to hone their songwriting and music skills after school. We continued to work closely with the Scottish Fisheries Museum, which has provided regular activities for Dreel Babies & Toddlers, Dreel Friends and a second Dreel Burn Bioblitz.  Julia also provided support to and partnered with other community groups and individuals, including Anstruther Skatepark Group, Dreelside Woods Community Asset Transfer, Anstruther & District Allotment Association and Dreelside Park Upgrade.

In the autumn, we were once again able to open Dreel Halls for Doors Open Day, allowing visitors to take in the view from the parapet of the St Nicholas Tower. We also took part again in the November Bowhouse Food Market; with our generous volunteers baking seasonal apple crumbles and raising much needed funds for the AIA. We must also thank our volunteer gardeners for their work in the AIA garden, which continues to delight passers-by.

All current events and activities in the AIA’s programme can be found on the website and Facebook pages.

In 2022 we received financial and in-kind support from, among others, the National Lottery Community Fund, the Community Kist, Christine Keay, Early Years Scotland, Balcaskie Estate, Bowhouse Food Market, James Aird & Sons, Amazon Smile, Anstruther Co-Op, Greener Kirkcaldy  and Fife Council. We thank all our wonderful volunteers without whom we could not offer all our events and activities, including our Honorary Patrons and the dedicated Committee. Thanks also to Julia, who has done so much to transform the AIA over the past two years, and our hall users, who ensure that Dreel Halls plays a vibrant and important role in our community.

We are hosting an afternoon of river-related activities at Dreel Halls on Saturday 1st April from 1pm to 4pm. We will have the Forth Rivers Trust interactive river table, an invertebrate monitoring and identification activity, a caddisfly crafts activity, a display on the Anstruther Primary School Fish in the Classroom project, information on the Dreel Burn Project along with our usual refreshments and home baking.

All are welcome.

You can also join our hands-on community invertebrate monitoring session from 2pm – 3pm, meeting at the Dreel Tavern footbridge. As part of our community-led project to improve the Dreel Burn, the AIA aims to monitor the water invertebrates that live in the burn over the next 12 months. All are welcome to come along and find out more at our community invertebrate monitoring session at Dreelside Woods, led by Forth Rivers Trust. We are grateful to The National Lottery Community Fund via Climate Action Fife for funding this community event.

After the sampling we will walk to Dreel Halls for indoor activities (as above). Please dress appropriately for the weather and with suitable footwear.

We hope to see you there!

Check out our upcoming Dreel Burn Project events, we have something for everyone!

You can find out more about the project at a drop-in information session on Saturday 26th November from 12pm to 2pm at Dreel Halls. Our working group and staff from Forth Rivers Trust will be on hand to explain what the project is all about and how you can get involved.

For the scientists among us, in the morning of 26th November you can join in our information session on water monitoring, which is one way of contributing to our project. Meet us at the footbridge near Dreel Tavern at 10.30 dressed appropriately for this outdoor, burn-side activity. We’ll be collecting samples at Dreelside Woods and testing them with the help of Forth Rivers Trust staff.

For those who would like to connect with the burn in a more creative way, we are running an Autumn monoprinting workshop on 27th November, 2pm to 4pm at Dreel Halls. Local artist Linda Jackson will lead the workshop, teaching participants how to make Autumn monoprints inspired by the seasonal colours and natural materials from Dreelside Woods.

You can find more details on these Dreel Burn Project events on our Other Events page, including how to buy tickets for the workshop.

Anster Cinema is back on Sunday 7th August with this “strange and wonderful tale” full of “thrillingly life-affirming performances” (The Guardian).

Deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, isolated from society, devoted but unconventional father Ben (Viggo Mortensen) dedicates his life to transforming his six young children into extraordinary adults.

When tragedy strikes the family they are forced to leave their wilderness paradise and begin a journey into the outside world that challenges Ben’s idea of what it means to be a parent and brings into question everything he has taught his family.

Dir: Matt Ross
Cert: 15
118m

Tickets: £5 / £2 under 18s – available on the door.

Refreshments available by donation to the AIA.