Tag: Blackhall Primary School

Dobbies’ store announces community winners for 2025 gardening campaign

BLACKHALL PRIMARY SCHOOL TO RECEIVE SUPPORT FOR THEIR GREEN SPACE FROM DOBBIES GARDEN CENTRES

Dobbies Garden Centres has announced the local charities and community organisations set to benefit from its support this year, helping them to create, enhance, or revitalise their indoor and outdoor green spaces — including schools, nurseries, care homes, allotments and community gardens. 

Blackhall Primary School has been selected by the Edinburgh store to receive donations and support as part of Dobbies Community Gardens.

The school has outdoor learning classes during the week and would love to start growing their own fruit and vegetables from scratch.

Dobbies’ support will give the school the guidance, tools and seeds needed to bring this grow your own project to life. 

Over 600 groups applied to Dobbies Community Gardens when it opened in March. Each Dobbies’ store selected a local project to support from the nominations that were made. 

The winning school will now receive a one-on-one session with Dobbies’ Green Team at the Edinburgh store to kick-start the activity.

The team will support Blackhall Primary School throughout their project with products, tools and plants, along with volunteer hours to help bring the green space to life and keep it thriving.

Jenna Bavidge Dobbies’ Edinburgh store General Manager, said: “We are really pleased to have had so many community groups in Edinburgh reach out looking for support with their green spaces.

“We’re committed to supporting the local communities around our Edinburgh store, and the mix of winners showcases the many ways people and communities can benefit from garden living.

“Congratulations to Blackhall Primary School who have been successful in receiving our support this year. We’re looking forward to supporting this school and are excited to see their space flourish.”

To find out more about Dobbies Community Gardens and see this year’s winners, visit www.dobbies.com/community-gardens. 

Singing Out at Strachan House!

Care home residents form new community choir

Residents and guests at Strachan House Care Home in Blackhall are looking forward to hitting the high note with their own community innovative choir.

Working with a local charity Forget Me Notes the choir hopes to engage their intergenerational community and create a group where the affected by Dementia have a place to still express themselves through music and song together. 

Local residents from Strachan House Care Home will practice many a varied song that allows them to take a trip down memory lane. The Choir will get together once a month with people from the community joining in and all performing together.

The Blackhall Primary School choir will also come along making it a great session of intergenerational fun too.

The idea came about when Mandy Head of Activities at Strachan House made contact with Alan the founder of  Forget Me Notes, a local charity that engages those affected by Dementia and other conditions in offering group music and song came together to discuss building a choir from a care home into the community.

“We want to demonstrate that being in a care home doesn’t mean life stops. In fact it’s just getting started. Our aim was to promote inclusion, and invite our community to have the opportunity to be part of something special.

“The choir is an arm that reaches into the community and touches those affected by isolation or loneliness and delivers a safe network of friends and support.

“This choir literally hits all the right notes!”

The choir practice will be held every second Friday of the month at 10.45am at Strachan House and will be open to all who would like to come along.

The hospitality team at the home will also provide a spread of sweet and savoury treats for guests to enjoy during their get together.

Alan said: “We are really looking forward to being part of this new and exciting project.”

General Manager, Gordon Philp said, “Our residents and guests always love a sing along together, so we are very proud of this new innotive and welcoming everyone from our community to join in our choir” 

Strachan House care home is run by Barchester Healthcare, one of the UK’s largest care providers, which is committed to delivering personalised care across its care homes and hospitals. Strachan House provides residential care, nursing care and dementia care for 83 residents from respite care to long term stays.

Lights, camera, DATA!

Calling all budding Steven Spielbergs, Kathryn Bigelows or Peter Jacksons, Netflix fans, and promising BBC Data Scientists! A national competition to design a film or tv series based on data has been launched at DATAFEST 2019 – the UK’s first ever two-week festival of data innovation in Scotland. Continue reading Lights, camera, DATA!

St Catherine’s win 20mph Schools Video competition

As stars of the Big Screen flock to the Capital for the 72nd Edinburgh Film Festival, a group of fledgling film-makers from local schools had their own red carpet moment.

Continue reading St Catherine’s win 20mph Schools Video competition

Active Kids time again

ellie simmons.2

It’s that time of year again when Sainsburys Blackhall are launching our active kids vouchers (writes Gail Wilson).

This year we launched our Active Kids campaign at the Scottish parliament. Our store manager George Paton, Customer Service Manager Louisa Higgins and I had the great pleasure of meeting paralympic champion Ellie Simmonds, along with a group of children from Blackhall Primary school.

The children had a great time and showed that being active can be fun as they all bounced around on space hoppers they were given!

Make sure you collect your vouchers in store now as you shop!