Our Thanks

We would like to express very many thanks indeed to The Scottish Land Fund for their funding award to SEAchange in November 2020, to enable us to buy the Slains Kirk building and nearby land for community woodland.  This grant is vital in helping our project take shape.

A big thankyou too to the Architectural Heritage Fund for another grant – a development grant this time. It is making a big difference!

And very special thanks to Fiona Bell for designing the brilliant logo for SEAchange. We’re excited to have it. She has also created four short films – click on the links to watch these, they are between 2 and 5 minutes long.

We want to thank the Woodland Trust, Just Enterprise, The Scottish Civic Trust, Business Gateway and NESCAN for grants to help develop this project.

Our very warm thanks to the Formartine Area Committee for awarding us grant funding. In 2018 this enabled an independent valuation of the land and kirk building, and also a feasibility report into the project.

The Formartine Area Committee gave us further funding in 2019 to continue our research on the viability of the ideas proposed, with a structural survey, and costs calculated by a quantity surveyor. They also provided funding for an independent community ballot.

We are very grateful also to The Architectural Heritage Fund for grants in 2019 and 2021 helping us to commission a building condition report, and initial drawings by local architect, Stephen Brown, as well as further developing the SEAchange project.

Many thanks as well to Just Enterprise which has worked with us to review our business plan.

We are hugely grateful to Stephen Brown ARIAS for the architectural designs he has done for this project, and for the many hours he has spent with us, attending meetings, explaining practical details, and answering questions.  He has been very generous with his time.

Our ongoing and very warm thanks to Vishnu Eschner, who has designed, maintained and keeps this website updated – a very important noticeboard and reference store for SEAchange. 

We much appreciated all the work that Alison Simpson of Blue Nimbus Ltd put into the Feasibility Study she produced between December 2018 and March 2019 – it was very helpful in taking SEAchange forward.

Helen Barton of Highland Community Resources also contributed greatly with all the thoroughness and huge amount of time and effort she put into organising the community ballot held in Slains and Collieston in November-December 2019. Our grateful thanks to her, too, for doing this.

Our warm thanks also to Sarah Whitman and Fiona Smith of Delfinity Ltd for meeting with us and sharing some of their thoughts, time and expertise to help us develop SEAchange.

We would like to express many thanks indeed to Slains and Collieston Community Council, for all their practical and thoughtful help through the various stages of the project, which we have appreciated very much.

And a very big THANKYOU to all of you in Collieston and Slains who have done so much to shape and encourage SEAchange with suggestions, ideas, practical help, votes, emails, and being there at events and meetings.