Argyllshire Gathering Hall, Oban, 19-20 June 2008

Lismore Heritage Museum

SINCE ITS inception in 2000 Nàdair has successfully kick-started, co-ordinated and guided through the voluntary sector funding maze 70 environmental and heritage projects worth £10m scattered throughout the islands of Argyll.

Nàdair’s first Director, Mike Robinson, explained in his talk how Nàdair itself was the product of a last minute scramble for lottery funding back in 1998 when the letters HLF were as likely to signify the Hamster Liberation Front as the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Other presentations from RSPB and SNH staff demonstrated the significant economic, educational and community benefits of projects like Mull Eagle Watch and the Flowers of Colland Tireebook, but it was representatives of Luing Community Trust, the Finlaggan Trust on Islay and Comann Eachdraidh Lios Mòr (the Lismore Heritage Society), who brought home with heartfelt thanks how their projects had succeeded against many odds due to the unfailing expertise of Nàdair staff and the efforts of countless island volunteers.

A trailer for a forthcoming DVD film about the Nàdair 2 projects by Andy Crabb (whom I last saw building a yurt behind his house and tearoom on Kerrera) beautifully illustrated – in luminous images and the words of the islanders themselves – how they had been empowered to reconnect Argyll’s Atlantic islands and achieve what they never dreamed they could.

This was further reinforced next day on the visit most of us made to Ionad Naomh Moluag (the Lismore Gaelic Heritage Museum) by the warmth of the welcome we received from its large team of supporters and their evident self-confidence and justified pride in the outstanding quality of their museum, study centre, shop and café.

However, on returning to Oban for the final session it became clear that there would be no Nàdair 3 programme, since Argyll was considered to have had its share, and that with funding cuts there might be ‘no new builds’. Where does that leave plans by the likes of the Isle of Luing Community Trust for a Centre for Island Life which were included in the Nàdair 2 scheme but had to be withdrawn when time ran out?

How also does it square with the assurance by Jim Mather, Scottish Government Minister for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism, in his concluding remarks that Government funding of the voluntary sector was to more than double within two years? He quoted the inspiring words of the Scottish mountaineer W.H. Murray, which had previously been attributed to Goethe: ‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!’

Yet he also made the alarming pronouncement that in future some funding could be in the form of loans not grants. In the light of the new Scottish Government policy on a ‘third sector’ based on social enterprises, what chance boldness – let alone magic – on the part of leaders of Community Trusts and other voluntary groups who could be held liable for repaying large debts?

Do they really want to spend their time ingeniously tendering for and undercutting others to try to win public and private sector contracts?

As is often the case on such occasions, it was the informal networking during coffee breaks, at the dinner and ceilidh, on the minibus and ferry to Lismore, and in small acts of solidarity like buying raffle tickets to support the Isle of Gigha Garden renovation, that in the long run could bear most fruit.

As well as being stimulated by like minds from other Argyll islands and elsewhere, I was delighted to encounter Ray Burnett of the Dicuil Institute of Island Studies and the Small Islands Film Festival who had come all the way from Benbecula to take part. We found we had much in common, including an interest in the voyages of the Celtic monks as well as all things island, and it wouldn’t surprise me if our paths were to cross again. Let’s hope we’ll still be networking at some future event to celebrate twenty years of Nàdair.

Norman Bissell is a director of the Isle of Luing Community Trust and author of the poetry collection Slate, Sea and Sky.

© Norman Bissell, 2008

Links

• The Nàdair Trust