Grant Park 100 took place on Saturday, 24 August 2024, when thousands of people marked the centenary of Sir Alexander Grant’s gift of Grant Park to Forres. The event offered six hours of entertainment including music, storytelling, exhibitions, demonstrations and competitions, supported by over 125 volunteers from across the community. One arena showcased falconry, sheep shearing, gun dog displays, Soapbox Carty racing, the Forres & District Pipe Band and cars from the ten decades of the park’s existence, while another arena offered a mini–Highland Games. Local organisations offered a wide range of free have-a-go activities.

Our primary objective with this project was to make the small hall a welcoming and warm facility for the users, and at the same time, reduce the cost of running the venue. We achieved this by insulating both the walls and the roof space. Funding from the Berry Burn Community Fund has allowed us to achieve an objective that was proposed in our last Community survey. We foresee the facility being used by a more varied group of people.

At Naturally Useful, we believe in the power of mindful creativity, having long dreamt of expanding our offerings to nurture local health and wellbeing. Thanks to generous funding, this dream is becoming reality with The Willow Field Project now offering volunteering opportunities and weekly groups for adults with additional support needs. Berry Burn Community Fund’s funding of an outdoor classroom, nearing completion, promises a beautiful, cosy, tailor-made space by winter in which to learn, craft and connect. And their support with accessible paths has truly made our field more welcoming to all. We are deeply grateful for the help with our community project.

I completed a fantastic dental elective in Roxas City in the Philippines, delivering oral health education and completing extractions for patients in need. We worked in both government health facilities and remote rural communities to treat patients in pain and I was lucky enough to work at a dental mission, where a group of 8 dentists and students treated a group of over 200 patients in one morning. It was an absolutely incredible experience I will never forget, and I cannot thank the Berry Burn Community Fund enough for their support with my journey.

Pride in Moray is a LGBTQ+ charity based in Moray who provide not only an annual Pride event, but also outreach services to the LGBTQ+ community in mainly rural areas. Our core aim is to promote equality, diversity and advances in education, in order to eliminate discrimination against the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and others (LGBTQ+) Community.

The Pride event allows people to come together to show solidarity and support one another, to be visible and accepted as part of the wider community. It allows the community as a whole to get involved in celebrating and supporting the LGBTQ+ community, raising awareness and understanding of the issues facing Moray.

With the help of the funding offered by the Berry Burn Community Fund, Moray School Bank were able to support 165 children across the Berry Burn Community Fund area in 2023/24 by providing school uniform and warm winter items, allowing them to attend school, happy, confident and ready to learn.

The Roseisle Hall Trustees planned to replace a forty-year-old kitchen and make the existing space a bright, warm and welcoming area that could be used not only as a kitchen, but also as a meeting place for meetings, community groups and lets. Funding from the Berry Burn Community Fund and others allowed us to put in place a six-week project that insulated the room, built a store cupboard, and installed a new kitchen with energy saving appliances and a non-slip floor. For the Roseisle residents this means we now have a community space that can be enjoyed for many years to come.

The Timeline of Forres is an innovative animated video by the team behind popular children’s book Fantastic Forres. This is a free educational resource that will help children to learn about their local area in an accessible way. It is available to stream and download on our website www.fantasticforres.com and on Youtube: www.youtube.com/@fantasticforres. The downloadable file can also be sent on request by contacting fantasticforres@gmail.com

Wild Things is an award winning environmental education charity working in Moray, Aberdeenshire and the Highlands. Since 2003, Wild Things has enabled over 36,000 children, young people and adults to learn from and be inspired by their local natural environment. We pride ourselves on bringing nature experiences to all areas of our community and blend a holistic mixture of conservation, wellbeing and education into all of our charitable programmes. Having access to reliable and accessible transport is absolutely fundamental to these programmes and without this key piece of equipment, we would be unable to deliver our outreach work across a highly diverse set of communities.

We would have definitely not been able to do this project without the funding from the Berry Burn Community Fund. The significance of the support for the enabling works has been huge as we have now been able to start Phase 1 of the capital building works which has been funded from other sources. The support for the enabling works has also meant we are in a better position to move forward in the other capital works to ensure the sustainability of Forres Town Hall and to bring it up to 21st century standards which will cost around £5M.