S3E6 - Aberdeen Football Club Community Trust’s MINDSET with Murray Collie

This week, we spotlight community impact with Aberdeen FC Community Trust. MINDSET Development Officer Murray Collie explains how the Trust uses the power of football to deliver a 12-week programme that helps pupils aged 10 to 14 build confidence, manage anxiety, take positive risks and strengthen their support networks. 

We dig into the structure of winning words, how teachers weave sessions into PSE, and why early, preventive work matters. Murray shares outcomes schools are seeing, including more pupils seeking help when they need it and a stronger understanding of empathy and resilience, plus how the programme could scale with other club foundations across Scotland. If you are in HR, in education, or care about youth wellbeing, this is a must-listen. 

Guest: Murray Collie, MINDSET Development Officer, Aberdeen FC Community Trust. 

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Transcript

Ewan (00:07):

Hi, welcome back to the Recruitment and Beyond Podcast. This week is a little different. We are chatting to Murray Colley, who is the mindset development officer for the Aberdeen Football Club Community Trust. Murray, great to have you with us.

Murray (00:23):

Fantastic to be here. I'm delighted to be on.

Ewan (00:26):

Thanks for joining us. So yeah, I think this week we wanted to look at something slightly different, as I mentioned, and just look at the charity aspect of our local communities. Obviously we have an office in Aberdeen, but we have the offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow and we want you to just take a little bit of a different approach and just talk about the great work that the guys are doing at the Community Trust and to introduce that and to hopefully raise the idea about supporting local charities and communities right across the country. So Murray, for those that don't really know what the community trust does, can you tell us a little bit about your mission and the purpose of the trust essentially?

Murray (01:02):

Yeah, so we are the partner charity of Aberdeen Football Club. In around about 2014, we set up ourselves as kind of an independent charity. So we use a lot of the benefits of the football club and like the stadium and things, but we are an independently funded charity. And our aim really is to use the power of football and use the power of Aborigin Football Club and specifically to kind of empower our communities and to improve wellbeing and to really look out for the people that are local to us. And I think football clubs were originally set up to benefit communities. I think sometimes with the amount of money that's maybe in the game now that maybe loses, that message maybe gets lost a little bit from time to time, but they are set up for people thereself for football clubs. So set up for communities, sorry.

(02:01):

So our aim really is to use the badge to inspire and to engage people across loads of different programs. So we have work in education and positive destinations, which I think we'll probably touch on majority today because that's where my work takes place. But then also across, of course, football and giving young people access to football and making sure that there's opportunities for them to play and get a kick about and stuff like that. And then also a lot of health and wellbeing work with older adults. And we do a lot of work in dementia and Alzheimer's and then little bits around prostate cancer and living well and all that sorts of stuff. So loads of programs. I think anytime that we kind of release impact reports or things like that, it's always, I still find it a little bit surprising the amount of work that we do, the breadth of work that we do.

(03:01):

But the core aim, the core mission is to use football to help our local community. And that's what we've been doing since 2014.

Ewan (03:10):

Yeah. No, brilliant. And so you mentioned that part of what we support is the mindset program. And you work with thousands of young children every year. So what are the sort of challenges you're seeing, the most common challenges across schools and communities right now for young people?

Murray (03:28):

Yeah. So I think for a lot of the young people that the mindset program works with is that kind of 10 to 14, which is really interesting because you're getting young people who are just about to move into probably one of the biggest transitions in education, which is from primary to secondary school, and that's quite a big jump. And then also kind of those early years of bedding themselves into secondary school and starting to make decisions about what they might fancy doing maybe later down the line, that sort of thing. But yeah, we're definitely seeing, I think, a lot of young people who are maybe experiencing quite feelings of anxiety around change and not a hundred percent sure about where they fit within maybe class dynamics and things like that, and try to struggle with that a little bit, but maybe also on the kind of emotional regulation side in terms of regulating emotions and responding appropriately and in the correct way.

(04:31):

So we do a lot of work with our young people around that. And then little bits as well, just around confidence and self-esteem. I think we've got lots of young people who are very, very capable, but maybe aren't so fantastic at selling themselves. So we need to do a little bit of work with our young people on that too. But yeah, it's a complex one. I think being a young person today is probably, in my opinion, maybe a little bit more difficult than it has been before with things like social media and just the way that peer relationships develop and things now. So the Mindset Program hopes to support young people through such an important and key stage of their life is kind of our aim.

Ewan (05:12):

Yeah. And is that the inspiration behind it, is that we've got this slightly ... Well, I suppose ... I don't know, maybe you could tell us actually, almost a growing sense of a challenging mindset or people who are finding it difficult. Is there a growing number of people who feel like that? Do you think, as you mentioned, things like social media, the impact that young people are having, the impact or the world that people are living in these days is quite challenging. Are you seeing an increase in those numbers and is that why the mindset program was set up?

Murray (05:46):

Yeah. So to kind of give you a little bit of background, we partnered with a US charity called Grassroots Soccer back in 2019, and they do amazing work in Africa around, especially with young people that are kind of health charity for supporting young people. But in Africa, they were more kind of focused on the prevention of AIDS and HIV. And when there's a link between grassroots soccer and the football clubs, when we set up our partnership, they wanted to launch something over here that they thought would support an issue that we were regularly seeing in our communities. And mental health was one that kind of flagged up pretty quickly. And I think we find that through some of the kind of research and things that we've done through or kind of drawn from experts like Scottish Action for mental health and things like that, we find that we've got about feelings of anxiety and depression have kind of doubled in young people in the last 30 odd years or something like that.

(06:49):

So there's been a trend and currently we've got about one in 10 young people who will experience a mental health condition. By the time they reach 16 years old, that's about three in every classroom. So it's something that needs addressing and it's definitely, from our point of view, we are trying to fit part of that jigsaw puzzle to help not solve the issue, but to support the issue, I suppose. And we very much see our role as being quite early, wide scale, preventative work in terms of can we reduce maybe the burden on services higher up the chain, which we already know are kind of struggle with funding and can be often understaffed and overburdened a little bit. So yeah, we kind of looked at the stats and we looked at what we were seeing in our own communities. We do a lot of work in secondary schools and primary schools as it is.

(07:56):

So we were able to look at that a little bit and design mindset to kind of compliment the needs of the young people that we're working with. That's a big key thing for us is to make sure that the curriculum that we offer schools continues to refresh and stay relevant. It's not one thing that's going to stand still. It's going to make sure that it reflects what is going through a young person's head in 2026. For example, we don't want it to stay in the past.

Ewan (08:24):

It's definitely, everything's moving so quickly that what is going through a young person's head in 2026 is completely different to what was going through a young person in 2006, 2006 or whatever it might be. So yeah, it's got to continually evolve. And in fact, actually just a couple years ago, because things have moved so quickly, haven't they? Yeah, of

Murray (08:43):

Course.

Ewan (08:44):

So tell us about that. How does the winning word structure work? Why does it resonate so strongly with learners?

Murray (08:50):

Yeah. So we did a little bit of kind of ... The product that you're getting with Mindset Now, I suppose, is I would like to think is the best version of it. And we've had to do a lot of research to try and involve healthcare professionals and teachers and young people and all that kind of thing. We all want this to be an effort that reflects the values and needs of lots of different individuals. And the one thing that we found was that to build our curriculum, we wanted to have a set structure, which kind of meant that young people would get a different kind of skill every week, that they could go and basically start applying as soon as they left the classroom. So the winning word structure is mindset is a 12 week program. Every week has a different, what's called a winning word.

(09:44):

It's a little bit like a theme, and that is connected to a skill that we think is important for their mental wellbeing, but also for helping them develop self-confidence and being able to function within school and out of school and things. So to give you an example, win a word in week one is mindset. So we talk a lot about what actually is like the programs, of course, called mindset, but what does that mean? What do we think of when we think of the word mindset? But other words, we talk about there's risk one week. So that's more about trying to get young people to see risk as something that can be positive or negative. I think quite a lot of time young people see it as, oh, risk is a bad thing that has consequences. And actually we want them to flip that and say, of course that's part of it, but can you see taking risks as something that can be a positive thing?

(10:38):

Is that a case of like, for example, to kind of relate it to you guys in case like going for a job or going and applying for a part-time job or something might be a little bit of a risk in terms of that feeling of going into maybe competition with other people who are applying for the same thing, but definitely something that can have positive consequences and they often outweigh the negatives and things. So yeah, risk, we do supporters talking about who's in their support network, bits on leadership, bits on empathy, all these sorts of different words. And they're all connected, as I say, with a skill that they can use as soon as they leave the classroom that we have found are really good for promoting mental wellbeing.

Ewan (11:22):

And have you got some success stories or imeasurable outcomes that you guys are seeing from these programs? Because how long have the programs been running now?

Murray (11:32):

So yeah, so since 2019, we've had the program running in schools. When I came into POST in 2023, that was kind of with an aim to really drive the program forward. And before we kind of had mindset was kind of shared out amongst our education team. We have about eight education officers at the trust, and it was kind of everyone's responsibility. I was one of those education officers at the time, but we kind of had the idea that putting someone to focus on this full-time would be a better use of our time and resources. In terms of the success stories, yeah, there's been loads. I think in terms of numbers, this year we are on track to deliver mindset to the most peoples that we've ever delivered to in an academic year. We're going to be well over a thousand this year, which is fantastic.

(12:27):

We're going to work in more schools this year than we ever have before, reaching out to schools that maybe we haven't had the chance to work in before, because of course we want this to be accessible to as many young people across Aberdeen City and the Shire as we possibly can and then out with a kind of rollout plan eventually. But yeah, so in terms of the numbers, that's great. In terms of what we're actually seeing in the program, yeah, we have quite a robust monitor and evaluation framework that goes along with mindset, and we're finding that we're seeing almost like a third of young people are coming away from just this 12-week program, which is only an hour a week. So it's not something that's overly intensive, but we're looking to make sure that young people are still getting a lot out of it.

(13:19):

We're finding about a third of the young people at the moment are saying that they would feel more confident going and seeking help for their mental health, which is fantastic. I always think if we get one person from every classroom that feels like they can then go and have a conversation about something they're struggling with with a teacher or that sort of thing, that's really positive. But then we're also seeing huge improvements in young people's knowledge of topics like empathy and what that means and what it looks like in practice. A lot of young people who are saying that they feel that they have just a better understanding of what mental wellbeing means and being able to connect maybe symptoms or things that they're feeling on the regular with being maybe something that might be to do with their mental health. So it might be a case of, are they really struggling to get out of bed in the morning?

(14:09):

Are they feeling like as soon as something goes there, goes against them, they find it really difficult to bounce back from situations and things like that. And we're finding a lot of young people are saying that after doing the mindset program, they're seeing improvements in their ability to do things like seek help and bounce back from difficult situations. And then we're also having fantastic stuff, fantastic feedback from teachers and staff that are working in these schools who are seeing it as a really valuable tool that compliments the current curriculum really well. And we also get a lot of really good feedback in terms of the delivery model and having the football club be the ones to deliver this mental health education. I think it's not just another health and wellbeing period at school, it's something a bit different, it's a different voice. And currently we have teachers, we have 100% of teachers say that they would recommend it to their colleagues.

(15:07):

So that's fantastic. We're going to try and keep that number as high as we possibly can. Yeah, it's looking successful and we just want to build on that now if we possibly can.

Ewan (15:16):

Absolutely. And I suppose you slightly touched on it there, but I was just interested to know how it integrates into the school curriculum and the things like wellbeing attendance. Does it support that sort of thing as well? Is that what these schools are bringing it in for? Or are they just very mindful of the fact that some young people are challenged, their mindset is challenging?

Murray (15:37):

Yeah, I think it's a bit of both. I think at a time, the current landscape of funding and things means that funding for head teachers in schools is tricky and really difficult. And it means that we need to be innovative and find different ways to fund these fantastic programs like Mindset, because they obviously come with the cost. And that means that teachers are looking for it to have benefit where previously when funding was maybe more available, we could be probably a bit more innovative in terms of we could invite partners in and hope that they could contribute, but I think now there's a real kind of expectation that if there's going to be programs that money's being spent on, then they need to have benefit. So we are very obviously cautious about making sure that our product, the mindset curriculum reflects the experiences and outcomes of the curriculum for excellence, which it does really well, but then also aligns with the Scottish government's health and wellbeing strategy.

(16:42):

So all these things help to kind of make it, I suppose, an easier sell to head teachers. But we also find that what we have, our curriculum, quite often our education officers are based in the school anyway, and they're delivering mindset to maybe the S1 year group, for example. But then because the officers are still based in the school after the program's finished, there's then opportunities for things like little breakaway groups for young people who maybe really benefited from the mindset program. So it has a little bit more of a legacy than just the 12 weeks in the classroom. It's not like we go in and deliver that and then just leave. There's always an aim to make it kind of a longer term benefit for the schools.

Ewan (17:32):

Sure. And I think you, I mean, I noticed from one of the reports that you produced that the community trust has or provides SQA qualifications, things like school of football, digital dawns, there's things that can come off the back of this. So how does that mindset program integrate into that wider support network, if you like?

Murray (17:53):

Yeah. We have a bit of an ideal world in terms of how we want this to look. Obviously we can have young people, and we have had examples of young people in the past who have maybe done mindset in Primary Seven when they've been at primary school, and then they've maybe moved up to a secondary school where the trust are also present. So then they do a different version of mindset when they move into S1. They maybe then go and in S2 and three, they maybe are part of maybe what's called our alternative academy program. So that would be for young people who need a little bit of support with confidence or they're learning and they take part in a group where we do things like SQA qualifications and prepare them for maybe S4 where they'd be sitting at exams or taking an apprenticeship or hoping to go to college and these sorts of things.

(18:47):

So yeah, when it works really well, sometimes we can have young people who first engage with a community trust in primary six during a program like that. Then they maybe do mindset and primary seven S1, then they maybe do something like the School of Football and S2 or S3, and then they maybe take part in one of our programs that offers SQA qualifications. And then we also have our youth ambassadors program, which is kind of our employability program for young people that takes place out of school, but the pupils that come to that are quite often flagged and identified from schools that we already work in and stuff. So some learners get a real experience of a real journey with trust all the way through both primary and secondary school. And mindset fits nicely into supporting them probably within that kind of middle section, I suppose, which is really great.

Ewan (19:43):

Yeah. We've touched on the mental health side of things through the workplace. We did a podcast with SAMH and Daniel from their team there. And the skills that you're teaching young people there, the resilience, being able to ask questions and actually recognize what it is that they're feeling is so important. And it's going to be so vital when they move into the workplace as well, isn't it? As they go into the workplace that is probably digitally ... It's a digital world where things are being automated and workplaces are changing and actually still those human skills are so vital, so important. And some of the stuff you're teaching young people there is vital for their future, isn't it?

Murray (20:24):

Yeah. And it's really interesting speaking to partners that we have at Community Trust, and a lot of them are interested in making sure that our young people have these skills that will eventually be beneficial for them for when they move into the workplace. But we've also had a few people that have said a lot of things we're teaching them in S1, two, and three are not different from maybe what you would say to people when they're in work as well. It's not like we're not doing a ... Of course, it needs to be targeted and relevant to the audience we're doing it with, but a lot of skills in terms of prioritizing your time or taking risks or building a support network or leadership, all these things. All these things are still skills that'll apply when they go into the world of work. It's not just for school.

(21:14):

We like to say that it's for school, it's for wider life, and then it's for work or learning or whatever they do when they leave school. So yeah, they're all really important skills and they'll benefit anyone.

Ewan (21:28):

Absolutely. Absolutely. And again, as you say, having talked to other providers like Daniel at SMH, this is exactly the same sort of stuff that they're supporting people with. And it's perhaps that they've maybe not had that education at a younger age. They don't recognize it until they have to or they're faced with it. Whereas you're helping young people to really recognize this early. And I think the early recognition, the early awareness of how you feel or why you feel this way is so important to help you solve the problem, whatever the problem might be.

Murray (21:58):

Yeah. No, exactly. And that's how we think that this, again, coming back to what you were saying earlier, this is why I think it compliments other stuff in school very well, the rest of the curriculum quite well, because naturally our sessions, especially at secondary school, will take place within the PSE or personal social education time, and they might do a 12-week block of mindset and then maybe the week after or next term or whatever they have employers coming in to talk about job interviews or CVs or that sorts of things. And hopefully our young people are making connections between, okay, so that's the skills that these employers are saying that they want young people to have. I've just talked about that in the mindset program and I was given these skills and strategies for prioritizing and that, and if I can manage my time and I can stick to deadlines and complete work to high standards and things, then that's going to make me more employable and stuff.

(22:57):

We do want to make sure that we're fitting part of a jigsaw, not just ... We're not a one-stop shop. We want to work with other partners and things and make sure that our work compliments them and vice versa. Sure.

Ewan (23:10):

Yeah. And so I suppose touching on that then, thinking about scaling this project or scaling the whole program, it takes a lot of operational, financial support, that sort of stuff. So what does scaling look like if you're going to grow this project? And I know we've talked before about potentially growing it beyond Aberdeen. Is that on the cards? Is that something you're looking to do?

Murray (23:28):

Yeah, we're really keen to have conversations with people about potentially ... We think we've got a great project and we think we've got a fantastic opportunity to help it or use it to help other young people regardless if they're sitting in Aberdeen Say or Shire or if they are sitting in Edinburgh or they're sitting in Dundee or that sort of thing. Now, how we do that, you're right, is tricky. And there's probably a lot of different ideas about how we might go forward with that. We would probably want to target community trusts because there's a lot of good partnership between us and other clubs. I know that sometimes the football clubs, of course, in Aberdeen and all the associated football clubs, of course, are very ... There's fierce rivalry and things like that, and they want to ... There's competition and all that kind of thing.

(24:27):

At the community trust level, that's not how it really works. It's everyone working together to benefit their local communities and things. And if that means that we can go and work with a Big Hearts Foundation, for example, or the foundation at Hibbs or at Celtic or Rangers or anyone, we've got so many, even Montrose just down the road from us are such a fantastic community trust that do such fantastic work in their local community. If we can partner with them and provide a little bit of expertise around what we've been delivering, then the idea would be that they could then kind of be trained on how to deliver it and then deliver it to their own communities and of course put their own spin on it because whilst a lot of the issues that young people are facing are very similar, there is no doubt that a young person growing up in Aberdeen will have different life experiences to someone that grows up in Edinburgh.

(25:21):

It will just naturally be a little bit different. So yeah, we're looking at the moment about how we go about doing that. Most recently, we're potentially thinking about having clubs come to us for some sort of conference or that sort of thing and offering it out to football clubs to come along. They can pay a little bit money, come along for our training program, learn how to deliver a mindset, get our resources, and then take those resources and apply them into their own local community. I think that's the kind of current thought about how we might be able to get this out beyond Aberdeen. But yeah, the conversations we've had so far with a number of clubs have been really positive and people are really impressed by it and like what we're trying to do and like the messages that we're trying to put across, which is fantastic because it means we must be doing something right at the moment.

(26:14):

And if we are able to grow it, that would be absolutely, absolutely great. The priority is, of course, Aberdeen and the city and Shire and our local community, but yeah, there's definitely opportunity for it. There's definitely opportunity for it to grow.

Ewan (26:30):

That's brilliant. And I suppose as part of that, as I mentioned, there's financial support and I know that we support the trust as a company here. And so I suppose the corporate sponsorship side of things, for companies out there looking at the trust and just thinking," I'd quite like to be involved in that. "What's the benefit, I guess, what's the sales pitch from the Aberdeen Community Trust?

Murray (26:51):

Yeah. So for you guys, I suppose we're really grateful for the support that you offer us. It means that you fund places for the mindset program, and that means that we are able to go and approach schools and say we can deliver such an important and vital mental health training program completely free charge. So schools are able to say," Oh, that's fantastic of huge benefit. "I suppose the great thing about the community trust, I said at the very top of the podcast was we offer so many different programs in terms of right across our education and positive destinations, football, health and wellbeing across those pillars, that for anyone that's looking to support those programs, there's a good chance that there's something that kind of hits quite close to home. So whether it is a loved one that has dementia or Alzheimer's, it's maybe down the mental health route in terms of companies that their values or their ethos or they're really passionate about making the world a better place for young people.

(28:04):

Maybe it is something to do with they're passionate about football or they're passionate about sport and physical activity. I also, alongside my working mindset, I help to run our prostate football fans and training program for men affected by prostate cancer. So there's always going to be something, I always think we've got something for everyone, whether that's a participant, but also as a partner. So I do believe that, and I think what we do really well at The Trust is we're good at packaging our story and showing what we're doing. And it means that people can support us, whether that's financially or just by hearing about what we're doing, giving us a bit of their time, any of that sort of thing, I would like to hope that anything that they do support, they can see straight away, okay, that's where the money's going, or that's X amount of peoples that are going to go through the mindset program, or that's X amount of meals delivered at our community hub program on a Thursday, or those sorts of things.

(29:10):

So I do like to think that there's something there for everyone, but they can also see the benefit that their support's having.

Ewan (29:17):

No, that's brilliant. So just lastly, what's next for the community trust? What's the forward plans? What's coming up next?

Murray (29:25):

Yeah. So quite an exciting time for the trust at the moment. We've just had our AFCCT day, it just recently happened. So that is one fixture year where we shine the light on the work that trust is doing. So just a couple of weeks ago, we had that in the game against Dundee. So we had a lot of things going on in the stadium on that day to raise awareness of our profile. A lot of our supporters at the People club are well aware of what the trust do. But sometimes, as I kind of said at the start, maybe aren't aware of the kind of breadth of work that we do carry out. They maybe have young kids that go to our football festivals at the weekend, but then didn't know that we have health walks on a Tuesday, for example. So for us, I think we are always looking to expand the work that we do.

(30:23):

And I think mindset's a perfect example of that in terms of we are looking to offer this program out to more schools. We're on track, as I said, to hit our quite a big number this year in terms of the amount of young people that we've engaged with. I've no doubt that the aim then the year after will be to work with more young people.

(30:44):

But yeah, no, we've got a lot of interesting stuff going on around our health and wellbeing programs. There's always something that is going on. And when people, if they have a look at our socials or that sort of thing, they'll be kept up and in the loop. And yeah, it's something to definitely keep an eye on.

Ewan (31:07):

No, that's brilliant. Well, listen, as I say at the start, this was very much about just an introduction to some of the work that you guys are doing and hopefully make a few people think just a little bit more about maybe offering support or doing some charity work in their own area. But it's been brilliant to hear the fantastic work that you're doing there up there, Mari. And yeah, thanks very much for all your hard work and look forward to catching up again soon.

Murray (31:31):

Yeah. Thank you very much. It's been brilliant to come on and have the opportunity to speak, so thank you. Great.

Ewan (31:48):

Thanks for listening to Recruitment and Beyond Podcast. Hopefully there was plenty of insight for you to take back to your teams. So don't forget to subscribe and never miss an episode. And if you can, leave us a review. We really appreciate all the feedback and support we get. It makes a massive difference.