Forth Valley Sensory Centre – Growing for Greatness
Forth Valley Sensory Centre is a small charitable organisation based in Camelon, who used their 2024 Seed Grant to open their sensory garden and provide training opportunities to the community. Their vision is a world where people with sensory loss live inclusive, confident lives.
“Our project has managed to interlink people from different backgrounds and raise awareness of the environment and what we can do to help. We have hosted workshops and classes for the young people attending Windsor Park School. We have also had attendees along to workshops from all backgrounds, including people with a sight loss, Deaf individuals, and BSL Users. ”
“We have a social enterprise cafe on site as well as a sensory garden and kitchen garden. With the help of our team of volunteers and Centre Users, we use our kitchen garden to grow produce for our cafe and for use in our accessible cooking classes, delivered by our Deafblind Cook, David.”
“We have secured several garden volunteers since the project began, purely down to the friendliness and knowledge of our garden leads. All garden volunteers share knowledge and tips to make the shared spaces and their gardens at home/work to the best of their ability. As the knowledge was shared with the wider community, this has impacted how they deal with things such as garden waste, food waste, sustainable growing and eating, and generally living a healthier lifestyle. Their time here in our gardens has also given them all the information they need to make their own choices on what they feel would be beneficial to the overall community and environment.”
“Our focus was to make this project accessible to all, which I feel focuses on social fairness. People such as BSL Users are very unaware of climate change, the effect we are having on the planet and how we can work together to help this as the information has never been broadcast in British Sign Language. Similarly, people with a sight loss can hear all about environmental sustainability but without the right things in place to allow them to put their knowledge into action they will never be able to help improve things and make a difference. We have worked with people to raise awareness of what is going on around the world as well as giving people accessible solutions to put into practice in their own homes.”
“Our project has engaged with several people we weren’t expecting, some pupils from Carrongrange High School have been coming along to help us in our gardens as well as the young people of Windsor Park coming along to work with us and learn as opposed to coming along to do their own thing like they did previously. We have also sourced materials to make our garden more self-sufficient which in turn have been used to train individuals on what can be of use in their gardens at home.”
“Due to the professionalism and knowledge of our lead garden volunteers I feel our project ran smoothly and will continue to do so for some time. Our only issues were that we didn’t always have the correct equipment to carry out what we were looking to do although this was all quickly sorted out through the purchasing of more water butts, garden shredder, etc. Our volunteer handyman even built us a potting bench with multiple interchangeable compartments and wheelchair accessibility.”
“One of our Centre Users who now attends the gardens weekly to volunteer with our garden leads has said he feels like the project has helped him to gain confidence in himself and allowed him to enjoy the outdoors once more. This gent is very capable and generally feels rather down when helping with outdoor activities as he always wants to be as involved as possible, and this sometimes isn’t possible due to the risk of injury or lack of sighted guide assistance. This project has allowed him to come along to the Centre for his sessions weekly and enjoy the physical work he was used to before his sight deteriorated. He has developed a much better understanding of the environment and gained confidence to the point where he can now assist other garden volunteers.”
Visit the Forth Valley Sensory Centre website to find out more about the work they do.
