Creetown Initiative was founded by our late Senior Projects Manager, Andrew Ward. From humble beginnings in the early ‘noughties’, operating from a tiny store cupboard in the Creetown Heritage Museum, Andrew built the organisation up to what it is today – a vibrant community charity delivering local services and facilities and providing employment opportunities, in addition to a thriving consultancy service supporting other charities and organisations across Scotland. Please click here to find out more about Andrew Ward’s legacy.
In addition to an experienced team, Creetown Initiative also engages the services of specialist independent associate consultants.
Creetown Initiative Consultancy Team
Amy-Dee Watson is a Senior Project Officer and has worked for Creetown Initiative since 2011. Creetown Initiative delivers both ‘home projects’ in Creetown and carries out external consultancy work with communities and third sector organisations across Scotland, including fundraising, community action plans, business and development plans, consultations, community asset transfers and feasibility studies. Recent projects Amy has worked on include a Community Action Plan for Cairnryan, a Health and Wellbeing Consultation in St John’s Town of Dalry, a Feasibility Plan and Business Plan for the Linen Bank building in Dumfries and she has also carried out the design work for Sanquhar Community Action Plan, Castle Douglas Town Plan and Kirkcolm Community Action Plan. She currently carries out Community Project Officer work for Pinwherry and Pinmore Community Development Trust, having secured the community asset transfer of the former Pinwherry Primary School in April 2021 and has since secured £500,000 capital funding to redevelop the school into a community facility. For 10 years, Amy managed youth work provision in Creetown and the youth programmes have been so successful that the same model has been used in the neighbouring towns of Newton Stewart and Kirkcudbright. Amy, who has a Ba (Hons) in Film and Media, has delivered art programmes in Creetown, including the Creative Scotland ‘Creative Places’ year-long community arts project and secured £350,000 to redevelop the formers St Joseph’s Church in Creetown into the Quarrymen’s Arts Centre. A creative individual, Amy manages social media for Creetown Initiative and other community trusts, designs and edits our Ferry News community newsletter and carries out graphic design work for our organisation and others.
Elaine Marr is the part time Finance Manager for Creetown Initiative and Barholm, dealing with all aspects of bookkeeping, invoicing, payroll, VAT, management accounts and admin. She is also a Director/Company Secretary of WRDC (Enterprise Trust) Ltd, and joined us in 2017, after running WRDC for over 30 years on a full time basis, as well as working at Strathclyde Regional Council and the Abbey National Building Society prior to that.
.
.
.
Eppie Sprung is an independent Associate Consultant, engaged by Creetown Initiative on a freelance basis for specific contracts. Having worked across the public, third and private sectors, Eppie has a focus on business growth within the third sector. Her broad range of experience has enabled her to develop an extensive skill set that can be applied cross-sectorally, with particular emphasis on accessible and inclusive community engagement, business improvement and outcome-focused evaluation. Projects have included: the Theatre Royal, Dumfries Heritage Lottery Fund end of period evaluation; the Stewartry Health and Social Care Integration Locality Plan Engagement Process; DG Voice and Inclusion Scotland Integration Engagement Process; and Gretna & Rigg, Springfield & Gretna Green and Kirkpatrick Fleming & District Community Action Plan. In addition to the aforementioned, Eppie has worked as an assessor for the Scottish Awards for Business Excellence, she is a Social Return on Investment practitioner, a Participatory Appraisal specialist, an Evaluation Support Scotland trained trainer and an experienced corporate events manager.
Julian Watson is an independent Associate Consultant engaged by Creetown Initiative on a freelance basis for specific contracts. With over thirty years’ experience in the visual arts – working at first in museums and with arts centres in Ireland – Julian progressed to being involved with the ‘total economics’, benefits and problems of restoring historic buildings to new uses, and with the land management, social surveying, support and programming that can accompany this. He lives in Dumfries and Galloway and maintains active connections in Northern England and Northern Ireland. His experience with public consultation processes started with interviewing (for BBC Radio Ulster) mural artists across the political spectrum in Northern Ireland in the early 1980’s and continued through various community engagement programmes there. More recently, it was applied to the Environmental Arts Festival Scotland (2013), Fresh Start for the Arts (2013), Creative Arts Business Network (2014) and the Kirkcudbright ‘Britain from Above’ project (2014). As an independent associate consultant, his work with Creetown Initiative started in 2014. It has included an Options Appraisal and a Business Plan for the Clan Hannay Society’s Sorbie Tower (2015), an Economic and Needs Study Report for the adaptation and expanded use of Kirkcudbright Parish Church (2016), Community Action Plans for Canonbie (2017) and Coldstream (2018). His extensive experience in consultation has included interviewing those involved with regeneration in Castle Douglas (2020-21) users of its Community Centre (2018) and with six rural communities for the East Dumfriesshire Regional Community Plan (DECBG, 2019-20).
Barholm Accommodation Team
Panny Watson is the Manager of the Barholm Enterprise Centre, which includes Barholm Accommodation.
.
.
.
.
.
Jenny Adams assists Panny at the Barholm Accommodation.
.
.
.
.
.
Lisa Garrott works alongside Panny and Jenny at the Barholm Accommodation.
Youth Work Team
Stacey Duff is our Senior Youth Worker in Creetown. She manages and runs youth club sessions alongside Youth Workers June, Gayle and Megan. Stacey studied Sports Coaching and Development at college and also plays a lot of sport, her passion being football, so when it comes to sport sessions she is in her element! Stacey has a PDA (SVQ Level 3) in Youth Work.
.
.
.
June Paterson part of our youth team and works with young people in both Creetown alongside Stacey, Gayle and Megan. She has a PDA (SVQ Level 3) in Youth Work and has great conflict resolution and organisation skills.
.
.
.
.
Gayle Topping is a Youth Worker, working with Stacey June and Megan.
Megan Monteith is a Youth Worker, who started out as a volunteer with our youth work programme and is now part of our youth work staff.
Ferry Friends (Senior Citizens Project) Team
Sam Donnelly is Project Worker for Ferry Friends; a project for the older residents of Creetown and Kirkmabreck Parish. You can find out more information about Ferry Friends on it’s individual Facebook page; @ferryfriends
.
.
.
.
Becky Davis is a Project Worker for Ferry Friends, working alongside Sam to deliver our senior citizens project.