We are a charity with a focus on social and mental well-being. We provide arts and craft classes as well as food and drink in our cafe at a reduced rate. This provides our visitors with affordable and accessible means to be an active member of their community, to socialise, and to expand their skills. In addition to our classes, we facilitate activities such as Andy’s Man Club and Cafe Inc. We help people in our local town and surrounding areas to live healthy lifestyles, regardless of background, age or circumstance.
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Our Services
We currently run an extensive programme including:
Andy’s Man Club, Budding Babies Infant Massage, Adults Crafting Session, Elements Hypnotherapy Yoga, Doodle & Splat Messy Play, Sensory Bubble, Pottery (Adults and Children's classes), Overeaters Anonymous, Scrapbooking Class, Lego & Mario Kart Club, Jewellery Making, and Slimming World.
We have an on-site cafe, which has allowed us to partner with Cafe Inc.
We have function rooms that we are able to hire out to groups as well as private events & functions.
Who do we help?
We conducted a survey to receive qualitative demographics.
Our respondents stated they visit for a variety of reasons.
- 1/3 of participants stated they visit for a reason relating to sociality.
- 1/3 said they attend one of the support groups we facilitate
- 20% gave affordability as a factor
- Other reasons included taking up a new hobby, use of our cafe, by recommendation of a social worker, and hiring function rooms
People gave the areas they travel from as:
Dalgety Bay, Dunfermline, Inverkeithing, Rosyth, Aberdour, Lochgelly, Kirkcaldy, North Queensferry, Burntisland, Glenrothes, Kinross, Cowdenbeath, East Calder, and Stirling.
We see people from a wide range of age groups, as depicted below.
Easing Financial Stress...
We run our classes and cafe in a way that reduces the cost to our visitors significantly to ensure our services are accessible even to people experiencing financial hardship, particularly in the post-pandemic financial climate and the current cost of living crisis. This, of course, impacts our income, however is in accordance with our ethos.
In our survey, 79% agreed that we were affordable, or even more affordable than other places that offer similar services. We had 15 participants write that they had an experience they otherwise could not afford.
This is of importance to us as the Office for National Statistics reports that adults struggling with bills were more likely to experience low well-being in other aspects of their lives. Furthermore, Mind UK recognises that financial stress can negatively impact social lives and add to the risk of social isolation.
“The kids really enjoyed the class and had a great time. It was affordable and great to do something a little bit different”
Providing a Long-Term Solution
Our goal, in addition to funding the project’s current upkeep, is to expand our site and to continuously add to our services so that we appeal and are accessible to everyone. At present, we are operating at maximum capacity with the resources that we have.
We have scouted a potential second site. We would use a second site to add to our classes, increase the number of function rooms available, expand our cafe, offer holistic therapies, have a kiln available for our pottery classes, host local groups (we currently have interest from Fife Food Shack and the local Girls Guides). We would also like to add a gym to our resources to promote physical fitness alongside our programme focusing on mental and social well-being, to encourage healthy lifestyles in our community.
This is more important following the COVID-19 pandemic, where individual lifestyles were deeply affected. There is now an increased focus on local communities and the importance of developing new skills. In accordance with the goals of Fife Council’s Recovery and Renewal Plan (2021-2024), we aim to empower our community, promote emotional well-being and provide learning opportunities to assist in the long-term recovery from the pandemic as well as advancement of our local and surrounding areas.
Our project has been in high-demand since its inception, seeing a minimum of 200 people per week come through our doors. We already have a strong following of people from different places, ages, and experiences and, with increasing visitor numbers, have seen a demand for growth. In our visitor survey, 94% said they would return to us, with 85% recommending our services to others and agreeing that ‘That Place in the Bay’ had the potential to be a social hub for the local community.
Our visitors have also been requesting more classes. These suggestions range from additional arts and craft courses to assistance with managing personal finances, however, we cannot physically facilitate any additional programmes due to us already functioning at capacity.
Further funding would allow us to go ahead with the provision of music therapy and music lessons at our hub, something we are passionate about and would like to prioritise using your donations.