Community Awareness Event - 30th May 2025
On Friday 30th May CentreStage hosted our first Community Awareness Event with the support of our Neighbours. The event brought together multiple community-based services to collaborate, learn, network, and engage with the public. It provided organisations and the public the opportunity to hear about the support that is offered throughout the community. It demonstrated how easily accessible the support offered by organisations truly can be when organisations come together.
The organisations who attended the event were:
- Barclays Bank
- Autism Support Ayrshire
- East Ayrshire Federation of Tenants and Residents
- ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) Vibrant Communities
- Police Scotland
- CHAP (Community Housing Advocacy Project)
- ASP (Adults Social Protection
- NEST (Neurodevelopmental Empowerment and Strategy Team)
- Health and Social Care Partnership
- Victim Support Scotland
- Suicide Prevention
- Home Energy Scotland
- Community Brokerage Network
- We Make Kilmarnock
The event ran throughout the morning and open to anyone to attend. Each organisation had their own representative and stall sharing information, conversations, and experiences. In addition, with the support of Barclays Bank a session was held all about the prevention of banking related scam and frauds. They highlighted the threat of scams and frauds, in the need for greater awareness within the community. Especially with the rise of artificial intelligence. Their presentation was interactive, allowing people to share their own experiences and share their learning.
Lauren from Barclays Community Initiative who helped deliver the presentation said:
“This was a fantastic event, bringing services from the CentreStage Neighbourhood and wider community together! A great opportunity to raise awareness of the support we can provide, while connecting with each other and the people within our local communities.”
The purpose of the CentreStage Village is to demonstrate how a place-based model of support can allow for greater social impact within the community when services situated together work collaboratively. Within the CentreStage site is the Neighbourhood which consists of organisations that align with CentreStage's’ values of: Hope, Joy, Inclusion, and Aspiration. These services span key areas such as finance, housing, social security, advocacy, health and social care, childcare, tuition, employability, and many more. They each provide their services to those in the community who need them most and working in close proximity means the barriers to referrals, introductions, and communication are removed. It is made up of cross- sector organisations where collaborating, networking and learning is crucial and natural to the day-to-day operations at the Village. Events like these are the epitome of our model and it was a great opportunity to put a spotlight on the collective work being achieved. The Neighbourhood being based at CentreStage ensures that services cohabit together in a place which is safe, inclusive, and accessible to all. Ensuring there are no barriers for the community to access the support they need.
Cailean Tait who was the CentreStage representative on the day had this to say:
“We were delighted to be host to so many wonderful organisations and the attendance has been brilliant. CentreStage is committed to the principle that those who need support are able to access the resources they need seamlessly and events such as today put a spotlight on the ability and opportunity the CentreStage Village is capable of in bringing services together to share, learn and work together. We believe it takes a village to truly support a community, and we couldn’t do all the amazing work which happens everyday across the site without the care, passion, and dedication of these organisations.”
As a result of the success, we hope to bring more events just like this one to the community.
Article by Beth Patterson.
