Our first guest blog of our new feature, is from Ailsa Campbell, Chair of Crieff Community Trust.

 

Ailsa Campbell

Ailsa Campbell

“If I let it, my life could be completely taken over by my position as chair of Crieff Community Trust. says Ailsa Campbell. “But I’ve also got two very active school-age children to look after and a husband who runs his family’s business, Campbell’s Bakery, in Crieff and Comrie, where I also work doing all the graphic design, window displays and promotional stuff.

In the run up to Christmas, I’ve been getting into the bakery at 6am every day to help pack up and send off to our retail customers 24,000 - yes, 24,000! - Campbell’s mini mince pies.

One of our customers, House of Bruar, held their annual Christmas Food Fayre recently and I was there for two

Mince Pies

Campbell’s Mince Pies

days meeting customers, making contact with other Scottish craft food producers AND even fitting in a bit of market research for the CCT on what people from outside Crieff think about the town.

Our main focus at the Trust just now is finding the right person to become our full-time, paid community development officer, who will work 50 per cent of the time on general CCT business and the other 50 per cent setting up and running our co-working space. We’re advertising right now and hope to have appointed someone by the end of December.

We’re getting some Big Lottery funding for the co-working space project and I’ve got to say, they’ve been a big help to us; very flexible and very accommodating.

Crieff Learning Centre

Crieff Learning Centre

Initially, the co-working space will operate from the old Perth learning centre in the town. The lease which we’re currently negotiating, is due to start in January but I think this is going to be so popular that we’ll be looking for bigger premises before long.

 

 

It’s not going to be some glossy, new, Business Gateway-type place. It’s going to be a comfortable, lived-in space to work in. Probably the steering committee will go in there and we’ll have our lap tops and pretend we’re users and see what works.

Crieff's Can Do Space is going to be a comfortable, lived-in space to work in. Click To Tweet

And then, hopefully, I can get a week off for a family holiday before school starts back, somewhere sunny where I can just lie around and read.

I’m not a Kindle person, so I’ll be taking actual books with me. In fact, reading - in the bath - is my favourite way to chill. The books do get a bit soggy and I had considered one of those Oasis e-readers but they cost over £200 so that’s not going to happen!”