To support children and their families living in Douglas by establishing a substantial, long-lasting project which provides opportunities to garden, grow food and increase biodiversity within both the school grounds and community spaces.
Claypotts Castle Primary Parent Council
Go To WebsiteAddressed Challenges:
- Health and Wellbeing
- Food Security and Supply
- Flooding and Drought
- Biodiversity Loss
- Tech and Innovation
Action Areas:
- Biodiversity and Nature
- Finance
- Land Use, Food and Agriculture
Initiative Purpose:
- Mitigation and Adaptation
The Story
We are delighted to have partnered with many organisations in the East End: Douglas Community Spaces Group, Douglas Medical Centre, Rock Solid, Scottish Water and Abertay University. Our partners have helped us offer a number of community engagement sessions throughout the year. We held three family days in July 2024 in the grounds of the Medical Centre where we created an outdoor art installation and planted hundreds of seed pots for families to take home along with promoting the Wee Forest as a space for all. Activities were varied to encompass the needs of children from early years through to teenagers. Our Family Fun Day in June 2025 attracted over 500 children and their family members where we had a hugely successful day, offering a fantastic variety of fun activities and food for all.
We have created an exciting, stimulating space in our Polycrub, named the Claypotts Caterpilar which is used for growing food, as an outdoor classroom, and as a space for holding celebration events. Our children had a blast during their Halloween parties where they created hanging art which doubled as plant supports. They were delighted to discover Santa’s Grotto at Christmas time as our Caterpillar has the powers to transform with the season! Our nursery children harvested veggies during the summer holidays and used it to cook soup. Children from all stages followed a fantastic outdoor learning programme with our P7s taking up posts as Outdoor Ambassadors and our children with Additional Support Needs having their own quieter sessions with more time to explore the sensory aspects of growing and planting. Children along with supportive parent helpers and school staff learned about permaculture and planted only hardy, perennial plants throughout the school grounds and at the Medical Centre.
Our Scottish Water partners have been of particular support: providing the opportunity for our children to monitor the weather with a newly installed weather station; we will soon be harvesting water in the school grounds using a custom-built rainwater collection; and we have been learning about SUDs and their use in Douglas Park through STEM workshops. Our community are exploring bird migration with the BirdNET-Pi tech installed in the Community Centre thanks to our partnership with Abertay Uni.
Along with lots of dynamic, stimulating experiences, we are mindful of the benefits of quiet contemplative spaces and with this in mind, we are finishing up on our sensory garden for P4-P7 which will create a peaceful haven within a very busy playground space. Our nursery and P1-P3 children have benefitted from an enhanced play space with tactile, sensory planting and seating, and work is on-going to enhance bio-diversity withing the school grounds.
Success & Outcomes
To name just a couple successful outcomes; we were able to offer four free family fun days to around 800 participants. Also we held termly celebration events outdoors for the first time! The space is also used for relaxation, de-escalation and for children who are sensory-seeking. We received extremely positive feedback for the fun days and we're able to provide learning for all new Douglas Diggers members whether that be project management, design or even budget management.
Advice for others looking to do something similar
We had a great experience with a number of partners and some that did not work out as we had originally hoped. Some of the difficulties with partners were due to staffing resource/time where they could not commit as much as we hoped. Our core working group was a huge success with committed and willing volunteers who really made things happen!
A challenge we did not anticipate was the logistical issues of trying to develop three sites. Initially, we gave a lot of time and energy to the Medical Centre but realised this would be tricky to do consistently due to the group’s own childcare/family obligations. We decided to focus on the school grounds where there were more opportunities for people to drop in and out and continued to involve and support the Medical Centre through events. It was disappointing that we couldn’t manage all of the aims we had originally set ourselves but felt like a pragmatic decision to ensure good outcomes from the project.
Financially, we did not budget enough for building materials, particularly for the Polycrub where we vastly underestimated the build cost. The group had to look again at the budget and adapt although we strongly feel the spend on the Polycrub is justified as it has created a unique space within the school and has been adapted to our own specification so can be used all year room for a huge variety of activities.
We also faced challenges for a period of time where group members could not commit to time on the project due to personal reasons, which also coincided with school staffing constraints. This delayed a lot of the work that was due to happen in the spring and is now just coming together in late summer. The learning experience for us is that projects can come to a pause if required but there must be momentum and leadership in the group for it to re-start and pick up at pace. Thankfully were able to do that but given that all members were volunteers with a school staff member coordinating, this might have worked out differently.
We are very proud of what we have achieved in the short space of one year with a brand new group and have forged great partnerships and relationships with others in the city. We have plans to continue the work of Douglas Diggers, having already had discussions with the Head Teacher and secured support from Dundee Bairns. We are excited for what is to come for the children and families of Douglas.