24.02.2026
Anthea Coulter and Dr Nic Dickson at the Clackmannanshire Community Breakfast Event.Clackmannanshire Catapult Site: Deepening Collaboration and Community Insight
Anthea Coulter and Dr Nic Dickson at the Clackmannanshire Community Breakfast Event.An exciting early update on behalf of our Scottish Community Catapult team, Dr Nic Dickson (University of Stirling), Anthea Coulter (CTSI) and Professor Peter Matthews (University of Stirling).
Clackmannanshire, the smallest council area in Scotland by population, is one of the Centre’s Community Catapult sites. Despite its size, it has a vibrant and committed third sector where organisations work closely together in response to geographical constraints, economic pressures and local social needs. Clackmannanshire Third Sector Interface (CTSI) plays a key role in supporting charities, community groups, social enterprises and volunteering across the area. With CTSI’s support, Clackmannanshire offers a rich setting to explore how relationships, shared learning and community‑led action shape everyday wellbeing.
Dr Nic Dickson has been working as our C4 community‑embedded researcher alongside CTSI since December. She brings nearly twenty years of experience in community‑based research as a social researcher, adult educator and visual artist. Her practice is guided by values that align with C4’s aims: respect for lived experience, sensitivity to context, openness and a commitment to ensuring that community knowledge stays rooted in the places from which it originates. Nic will be spending time with local groups, listening to their experiences and observing how collaboration happens under both supportive and more challenging conditions.
A significant part of Nic’s early work has been her involvement in the Place Standard Tool for Food pilot. CTSI is one of five organisations taking part in this national initiative, led by Public Health Scotland. The Place Standard Tool for Food provides a structured way for communities to explore how local conditions, such as geography, transport, cost of living, access to good food and wider infrastructure, shape their everyday food experiences. Beginning the Catapult work with this pilot offers a topic that people can naturally connect to. Food is practical, universal and closely linked to wellbeing, making it an accessible entry point for conversations about fairness, resilience, community resources and the lived realities of life in Clackmannanshire.
‘Clackmannanshire has been actively using the Place Standard Tool for several years as a way of opening up conversations with communities about what is working well locally and what isn’t. The Tool is built around 14 themes – from identity and belonging to public transport and natural spaces – and helps to draw out both quantitative scores and qualitative insights that can then be visualised clearly in a spider diagram. We have adapted it for use with children and young people, but we haven’t previously applied it through a specific thematic lens.
With the new Good Food Nation legislation now in place, the timing of this Food‑focused pilot feels particularly significant. It offers an important opportunity to support Clacks Good Food Partnership as it moves into its next phase of development, helping us deepen our understanding of how people access food, where the gaps are, and what improvements could strengthen our local food system to better tackle health inequalities and poverty.’
Anthea Coulter, CTSI Chief Officer & Business Manager
The first months of work have focused on forming relationships and understanding the local landscape. Nic attended a CTSI community breakfast in January, where discussions centred on food access, affordability and the challenges community organisations face in sourcing ‘good’ food. Using visual scribing techniques, she created simple, real‑time drawings to reflect the conversation back to participants. These visual summaries helped people see shared themes as they emerged and provided a common starting point for future discussions. Nic’s clear and open documentation style strengthens the collaborative ethos of the Catapult site by keeping contributions visible and linked to their contributors.
As the work progresses, the learning emerging in Clackmannanshire will contribute to the Centre’s wider understanding of what supports community connection and effective collaboration. Insights from the Place Standard Tool for Food pilot, alongside the relationships developing across the area, will help shape the next stages of the Catapult work and inform the ongoing development of Nic’s embedded researcher role. Further updates will follow as the collaborative journey continues.
CTSI is one of our lead partner organisations. You can visit their website here.
