As part of the NW Edinburgh Greenspace Initiative Project, funded by CEC, Biffaward, GYC were nominated to receive support from the British Conservation Trust Volunteers to create a make-over of the garden area. 

Work began inside in November 07 with young people designing how they would like the area to be. A busy period of designing, making plans, creating art designs for outside and inside kept the young people at the clubs amused and busy.  The February and Easter school holidays enabled us to get digging, planting and rolling rocks!  Young people, volunteers and sessional staff worked very hard to achieve great results.  The garden area has transformed into an outside room.  We have a new pergola which can be an outside stage and cinema area, 12 vibrant bird boxes, 2000 new plants, a Granton Henge area, trees and bushes galore and also a new compost bin.  We have created an impressive outside room and also increased the profile of the centre with a jazzy new sign out front of the building.

As part of an ongoing programme of activities, the GYC staff, volunteers and young people will be continuing the hard work and maintaining the area.  The clubs have already been benefiting from the increased use of outdoors by having basketball tournaments, picnics and games nights.  All we need now is a good summer, fingers crossed!

As part of the GYC summer programme, we will be adding to our graffiti wall outside by including some of our new projects and displaying why “GYC is the place to be”.  Young people aged 11-18yrs will participate in a week long programme of activities in the summer 08.

GYC’s young people have a reputation of being very creative and artistic with many example inside and outside the centre.  As part of an ongoing programme of art project throughout the year.  GYC will become home to 4 art projects which including clay modeling, textile and fashion designing, stone carving and music production. 

Granton Youth Centre lives in a very old building which used to be St Davids Primary School in the early 1900’s.  As part of our summer programme 08, young people will research the history of the building.  They will speak to former pupils, research archives of the area, display and present their findings and we will celebrate 100 years of the building.  This project will develop participant’s links with the area, tracking the regeneration of the North West area and in particular the links with other areas.

The 3-year Aim High initiative aims to raise the aspirations of young people aged 11-15 who attend Broughton High School and come from the local housing schemes which make up the area known as Greater Pilton. The project is a partnership between Granton Youth Centre and Broughton High School and targets those young people most at risk of failing aspirations.  The project;

1. Operates a Breakfast Club based at GYC, The Early Risers, which gathers young people most at risk of truancy together, offers a healthy breakfast and then takes this group to school.
2. Operates a Homework Club after school based at Broughton High School which offers advice and academic support for homework and exams to young people at risk of academic failure.
3. Operates playground-based support (operating along similar lines to detached youth work) to identify young people who are at risk of isolation in the playground, and to make referrals to a lunchtime drop-in.
4. Offers an alternative curriculum for young people on restricted timetables and severely at risk of exclusion, which implements other accredited learning, such as Duke of Edinburgh, Youth Achievement Awards and SVQ levels assessed through Telford College.