Episode 12 (originally uploaded 22nd Feb 23):

This Week’s Story

Crieff ConneXions

This week Elizabeth Philip from Crieff ConneXions was good enough to give me a bit of her time to tell me about the organisation and what it does. (You can listen to the full podcast using the links here).

Crieff ConneXions started in 2020 as a response to some of the needs that were present during the early stages of the Covid pandemic. They became a charity in July 2021.

Their primary focus is to connect people with life opportunities, services and each other. We want to help local people have better lives and be connected to an organisation that can help them. We do this by providing support, information, and space to meet.

They’re based in an ever-improving facility in Church Street Crieff. In the early stages, Crieff Connexions worked with the support of Remake to take on support during covid and they did this from a shop unit in the High Street. Now they’ve grown and moved their base of operations into the old Penny Lane building in Church Street, Crieff. Elizabeth was happy to explain that there is still room for Crieff Connexions to grow some more.

The plans for their base of operations include a variety of old and new services and spaces for the community to access. The Crieff Connexions Centre is currently being renovated and made more appropriate for the purpose. There will be a phased opening with more information via their social media channels.

The organisation has grown from fairly humble beginnings. In fact, some of the projects they’re involved in started out in a cupboard. For a while, the school uniform project was one of these.

Their school uniform project (also known as ‘Connexions Kit’) allows families access to gently used uniforms which are then collected and redistributed. To begin with, this was done from home but now they have access to larger facilities.

They have many ongoing community support initiatives. Among them is their pop-up community cafe which includes a ‘Signposting’ element. This basically means that people visiting the pop-up cafe can find out more about services that may help them in a friendly and unintimidating environment.

They also have the previously mentioned school uniform project, offering local families at least one form of assistance when covering the cost of school equipment. Their school uniform shop also includes a referral service which allows them to ensure that those in most need get access to the services which can best support them.

Crieff Connexions also runs a community food share which is offering low-cost food as well as free surplus food to those who wish to access it.

Elizabeth explained that because of the nature of the donations they never know what they’ll have in so this aspect of the organisation can be quite fun. We also have a warm space open, with free tea and coffee, which offers people a cosy place to meet up and relax.

Additionally, they have a ‘quiet space’, which is used by Mindspace for counselling. Mindspace is a local mental health support organisation and I’ll have details about an upcoming event where people can learn more about what they do later in the podcast.

Crieff Connexions also offers people access to CATH (Churches Action for the Homeless) for housing support, as well as CAP (Christians Against Poverty) for debt support. Finally, Crieff Connexions also has a charity shop where folk can find a bargain.

I also asked Elizabeth which feature/ service within the organisation which she finds particularly fulfilling/ interesting.

Elizabeth explained:

“Having the community foodshare opening had been a big step for us. Its great to be able to offer more cost basics including food, toiletries and cleaning stuff. We get some of our goods from FareShare which is an organisation working to redistribute surplus food from supermarkets. As I said I just love to check and see “what’s in this week!”. We also collect surplus food ourselves from Coop and Aldi so we have a really interesting range.”

I like to check in with organisations and businesses and see how their current circumstances differ from those they expected when they began. It’s always interesting to hear about surprises and about how organisations adapt to need.

When I asked Elizabeth if there were any aspects of Crieff Connexions which have changed/ developed in unforeseen ways, she told me:

“We hadn’t really planned to have a charity shop. The trustees planned to run it for a month or so to clear some of the items we had acquired. However, it’s been amazing to see how grateful people are to get an item at a low cost and also to help people get things reused. People enjoy coming in for a look and a blether. One of our volunteers works for Mindspace so she is in hand to give a listening ear in this informal setting.”

I also asked Elizabeth if there are any aspects of Crieff Connexions that people might not know about. She shared:

“There is a lot going on at Crieff Connexions, I hope people will come in and see. Folk may not really know that we are here for everyone whether you’re in a low income or want to fight food waste. We are planning to develop a community cafe where we hope young people and others can have training opportunities.”

I also asked Elizabeth if there is something that she’d been part of recently within Crieff Connexions which stands out as really special for her personally.

Elizabeth told me that:

“…Over Christmas, we were for a third year able to distribute cooked meals to those in need of that care at Christmas. This year Victoria bloom joined us by offering Christmas flowers. Volunteers brought all this together with gifts and woolly hats in every bag of goodies that went out.”

I just want to take a minute to thank Elizabeth both for the time she gave me with this interview this week and for all the time and energy that she, and all the volunteers at Crieff Connexions, put in to help offer such a range of support for people in our local area.

I finally wanted to plug an event which is being run at Crieff Connexions on Saturday 11th March.

Grow Free 11th March

Elizabeth also told me that she’s looking forward to the Grow Free event on the 11th of March. You can bring along your plants and seeds and share them with others at their grow-free event. There’s something for everyone.

There are also several community organisations involved so you’ll get a chance to interact with these great local organisations.

Remake Scotland will be there. Based in Crieff, this sustainability-focused organisation offers Community reuse facilities, with fabric, art & craft supplies, a scrapstore, homewares, DIY, a ‘tools library’, and furniture.

You’ll also get the chance to talk from the folks from Mindspace, which is a Perthshire organisation offering mental health support via group courses, counselling, and peer support for people within Perth and Kinross.

As you might imagine, an event where people swap plants and seeds is also a great place to find out more about the Perthshire Seed Library. The Perthshire Seed Library is a partnership between the Perthshire Organic Gardeners and Culture Perth and Kinross Libraries. It aims to enable gardeners (experienced and novice!) to share a resource of open-pollinated seeds that suit local growing conditions. The Perthshire Seed Library supports vegetable and food plants, flowers and companion plants or native plants and costs just £5.00 for an annual membership. This covers training sessions, author events, talks from experts and a minimum of 6 packets of seeds.

Also present at the Grow Free event will be Crieff Allotment Association and the Crieff Community Gardeners.

Social Media Tips and Tricks: Make your posts pop!

As part of this week’s Social Media Hints and Tips segment, I talked about the free tools I use to clean up and improve the copy I write.

One is particularly good for long-form posts (the sort of thing you might use for a blog post or a longer LinkedIn post).

The other tool is more of a day-to-day improvement for your writing. It works as a check not only on your spelling but also on your grammar, as well as the tone you use in the copy you write (whether this is a Facebook post or a quick email).

Tight, readable text with Hemmingway Editor

On the surface, Hemmingway Editor appears to be a VERY basic online word-processing app. However, it’s actually a precise writing tool which provides real-time feedback on the readability of what you’re writing. Typically I copy text from inside a blog editor, or my own word-processing app (currently Google docs, for reasons I explain here) and then paste it into Hemmingway Editor’s online app. The array of metrics Hemmingway uses to assess your work is quite extensive (and really useful).

The easiest trackable metric it uses is a simple ‘Grade’ system for reading level. This is based on the US system for naming school years so you can convert this to the Scottish primary school reading stage by adding one. For example, if Hemmingway says your blog post is at a ‘Grade 6’ level, this means a child in Primary 7 (or somewhere around twelve years) would be able to read it comfortably.

The lower your grade level, the easier it will be for someone to follow. If you want to write blog posts that people can read during their lunch break I’d suggest going no higher than Grade 5 or 6. This level offers readers a light, accessible text that they can follow when passively reading your content.

However, feel free to get more detailed (and allow higher Grades) if you’re talking about something which requires additional expertise (i.e. if your text is aimed at people within your industry, who will be able to follow some more detailed concepts and terminology).

If you’d like to give Hemmingway a try you can easily use it right now by clicking this link. It’s totally free in this format but you can also download a desktop version if you’d like to use it at times when you can’t rely on your internet connection (please note that this is something you would have to pay for).

I’d also like to point out that I’m not receiving a commission or anything else for this link. The web version is simply something I use often and find really useful. I should also point out that I’ve never used the desktop version so I can’t even say whether it’s good or not so please check that it’s what you need before making your purchase.

Deep, useful Corrections on the go with the Grammarly add-on for browsers

The next writing tool I talked about in the podcast was Grammarly. Grammarly comes in a host of different versions, but the one I use myself is a simple browser add-on. This add-on reads text as I type it and assesses the spelling, grammar, and tone of what I’ve written.

The brilliant (and unique) thing about Grammarly is the fact that it gives you an indicator of the mood that is expressed by what you’ve written. However, it struggles to assess this once your text gets a little longer (I currently have no mood rating for what I’m writing here).

There’s not much more to say about this wee browser add-on other than that it can really help you with a lot of different short-form writing tasks. Want your Facebook post to sound more relaxed and friendly? Grammarly will help you hone it to do that. Want your LinkedIn post to look more professional? Grammarly will also be able to help you sharpen it up and add a hint of professionalism.

Wherever there’s a text box in your browser, you can use Grammarly. Browser-based emails, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more, wherever you write online Grammarly is there to help keep your spelling correct, your Grammar solid, and the tone of your text on point.

You can click this link to visit the Grammarly browser add-on page and download the correct version for your browser. Again, I’m not affiliated with Grammarly in any way, I simply find it useful and I hope you can make use of it too.

Thanks for Listening/ Reading

Hope you enjoyed this week’s podcast (and that you found this transcript useful too), and a final thank you again to Elizabeth for taking the time to tell us about Crieff ConneXions.

For those reading this, if you’re local to the Perthshire area and you’d like an ALWAYS FREE mention for your business/ organisation/ event on the podcast please get in touch. There’s a contact form where you can reach me through this website, or you can find me on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram and message me there.

All the best, John