GFN Edinburgh Gig #2: Crags Community Sports Centre

The Good For Nothing Edinburgh crew is at it again in Scotland’s capital. Our long awaited second event is finally here!

Join us to do some good in your hood as we apply our brains,energy, fingers and time to support the Crags Community Sports Centre. You’ll be jammin’ with a group of thoughtful do-ers, thinkers and other creative and business types who want to use their skills and energy to accelerate the work of grassroots social innovators and change makers.

We'll be working to support the brilliant Crags Community Sports Centre who see urban sports including basketball, roller derby & break dancing as a means of engaging youth in central Edinburgh.

Join us!

The Crags Community Sports Centre believes in the potential of sport to develop people and build communities.

Backed by an inspiring journey and unique mission, The Crags Community Sports Centre aims to re-envision the neglected but promising St Leonards area of Edinburgh. The Crags provides facilities for urban and alternative activities like basketball, break dance, martial arts, aerial yoga and roller derby. The organisation’s USP is the cross fertilisation between urban arts, culture and sport and there are currently developments to transform the associated outside spaces to extend the activities provided. The centre wants to teach kids to climb walls and light fires.

The site, equipped with an impressive sports hall, studio, social reception and open-access outdoor pitch was built 10 years ago following a very long campaign to the council. Cited as a failure the site closed in 2010. A joint procurement bid by Boroughmuir Blaze Basketball Club, Basketball Scotland and Castle Rock Edinvar Housing Association, led to the re-opening of the Centre as a charity in January 2012. Since then the place has been bouncing with schools (PE overspill and after school clubs), regular clubs, classes and more.

The Crags is now collaborating on a project to create a Play Corridor that makes use of the area immediately adjacent, known for rough sleeping and drug and alcohol use.

The initiative is led by Simon Turner. As the only full time member of staff, Simon is responsible for the strategic direction of the organisation.

Simon is keen to utilise the talents and vision of creative folk to explore opportunities for furtherdevelopment of The Crags initiative and the physical site.

Design a suite of graphics for Simon to use across all forms of operational and promotional materials. These should include icons of the activities on offer at The Crags.

A group of young people who use the Centre are devising new ways of generating sustainable income. They’ve attractedseed funding and now their idea need avisual identity and/ormarketing material to make it happen.More details about this one at the event!

Although The Crags is more than 80% self funding, they are keen to reduce dependency on grant funding for core operations, though this will remain an important source for capital projects. The challenge is to identify target markets to whom they could extend a range of offerings and devise a communications package to cater to those markets. For example, The Crags currently has an arrangement with an agency which uses the centre for dodgeball as part of visiting stag parties.

The centre is less busy from Easter through to September and Simon is keen to grow the use of the studio space, whilst still retaining the urban culture emphasis of the centre’s vision. The challenge should consider flexible pricing structures and consider the differing membership/usership needs of different groups and clubs. Ideas/sketches and plans as to how the physical space could be re-designed to facilitate more activities would be a welcome.

Create a narrative of The Crags and the organisation’s vision for the future. The telling of the story should adopt creative copy and be coupled with illustrations. The main aim of the narrative is to inspire children to join The Crags and use the spaces.