Autumn Crafting 14th October 2025
This year’s Autumn Crafting workshop was well supported and enjoyed by all. Thank you to all that attended this afternoon’s crafting session 🦊🦉🦇Very impressed with everyone’s artwork 🦔🐾 Lovely afternoon
COMIC RELIEF 2025
Our Stranraer Young Developers helped to raise £38.63 for Comic Relief with their sponsored fancy dress walk on March 22nd, 2025 at Agnew Park, Stranraer. Thank you to all those who donated and to our young developers in creating, promoting and participating in the event.
Stranraer Youth Development Team
Throughout 2024, the Stranraer Youth Development Team has been actively working hard to ensure that the young people of Stranraer continue to have their voices heard. The continuation of the weekly youth group meetings held at the Gateway to Galloway Hub has been entertaining and rewarding for all who attend, providing an inclusive and accessible space for creativity and engagement. In addition to these sessions, the Team has been attending twice-weekly lunch sessions throughout the year at the local Academy to host sessions with the students on topics that are important to them. As well as alerting the young people of Stranraer as to how they can get involved with local issues and also how to access volunteering opportunities at events such as the Trust’s annual Oyster Festival.
The Team has also been actively delivering fun crafting sessions at local events and festive times to ensure that the young people of Stranraer have fun, free, and creative activities to get involved with.
Summer Fun Day 2024
Stranraer Youth Development Team was once again delighted to deliver another Summer Fun Day in August this year. The team welcomed the community along to the Unexpected Garden to enjoy children’s entertainers, and a cinema day hosted by Skylight Cinema showing two films Paw Patrol and Finding Nemo back to back throughout the afternoon. Activities and games, as well food, courtesy of the Fed Up Cafe, were all free of charge throughout the day.
Stranraer Young Developers Cook Book Project
The SYD group began working with the Fed Up Café and the local academy to create a Stranraer cookbook in 2022. Staff at the Fed Up Café helped the group to practice some fun, simple recipes to potentially include and we also involved the local academy who drew pictures of recipe ingredients, featured in the book. The group came up with a lot of the design ideas as well as the name of the cook book and it is now on sale at the Gateway to Galloway.
Lighthouse Picture Competition
The Stranraer Development Trust conducted a competition incorporating local primary schools in January 2022. The competition centred on the launched of the lighthouse tours which had been developed by the SDT. Schools were asked to submit one drawing of a map of the 6 lighthouses incorporated in the lighthouse tours. Upon the submission of entries, the drawings were displayed in Tesco in Stranraer from the 23rd of February for approx. 2 weeks. An anonymous counter voting system was imposed, and a winner was announced on the 11th of March.
The winning school was Sandhead Primary. 
Nahla Mcmeikan, P7, who drew the winning design, and her classmates were invited to take part in an excursion to the Mull of Galloway Lighthouse as part of their prize. On 12th of May, the children from Sandhead Primary, along with their teacher, Kelsey McWhirter the Youth Activities Engagement Officer, and Allan Jenkins, both staff members with the Stranraer Development Trust, visited the lighthouse at the Mull of Galloway. All who attended received a tour of both the lighthouse tower and the exhibition centre, the children were able to learn all about the lighthouse and its history. After completing the tour, the children headed to the Gallie Craig Tearoom, there the children ate their packed lunches provided by the school and were treated to some delicious ice-cream sundaes, provided by Gallie Craig. Once we arrived back at Sandhead Primary School, the children were provided with various snacks, kindly provided by Sally Murray the Community Champion for Tesco in Stranraer. The children all noted that they very much enjoyed their trip and had a great time.
The Stranraer Development Trust would like to thank the P7s from Sandhead Primary school and their teacher, Miss Paula Douglas, for taking part in the competition and the excursion, the Mull of Galloway Lighthouse Board and staff for facilitating the tours and providing guides, the Gallie Craig Tearoom for hosting us for lunch and providing some delicious ice-cream sundaes, Sally Murray the Community Champion for supporting the competition throughout, Pete Robinson the photographer who captured the fantastic images and the ‘Scotland Loves Local’ funders who made the trip possible.
Pictures from the Lighthouse tour:
Stranraer Oyster Festival 2023
STRANSFORM – Stranraer Street Art Trail
In association with the Dumfries & Galloway Regional Arts Fund and Dumfries & Galloway Chamber of the Arts 2019/20, Stranraer Development Trust will be developing and overseeing the delivery of the Stransform project, which will incorporate artistic multimedia elements in and around Stranraer by local artists and youth for creating more positive and inviting spaces about the town.
The STRANSFORM Art Project aims to promote the regeneration of Stranraer through the public displaying of 8 artwork pieces around the centre of Stranraer. It is the hope that the public showcasing of the art pieces will encourage the public to take an interest in and engage with the regeneration process within Stranraer.
A total of 22 young people contributed towards the project, including 14 individuals from the Better Lives Partnership and 7 young people who were either already enrolled at the college or at Stranraer Academy. 7 out of the 8 artwork pieces have been created by a group of local young people who have also been completing a National Progression Award in Art and Design. The remaining piece has been created by Diana Hamilton, a practising Artist and NPA course lecturer with Dumfries and Galloway College, Stranraer Campus.
In order to help gain some artistic inspiration, an excursion to the Gallery of Modern Art was conducted on the 14th of February 2022. The young people were given a tour around the gallery and the opportunity to practice a print making technique. Feedback from the excursion has been excellent and is believed that the experience has been of great benefit to the young people’s development. Some pictures taken during the excursion are available to view in the Stranraer Youth Development Team Gallery section
After the creation of the 8 art pieces, the STRANSFORM Art Trail was developed and launched on the 16th of April 2022. The trail incorporates all 8 locations containing one of the art pieces.
The trail is still available to complete, leaflets and maps of the trail are available at the Gateway to Galloway Community Hub on Market Street.
Artworks from the trail
Click on each image to see a larger version.:
*Please note the art piece for ‘the Alleyway off Hanover Street’ is no longer available to view in person however can be viewed below*
