This project meets RCGF criteria: address vacant / derelict land as well as supporting locally developed, place-based regeneration projects that involve local communities, helping to tackle inequalities and improving the economic, social and physical environment of deprived, disadvantaged and fragile remote communities across Scotland. It is community led, and will result in strong regeneration outcomes.

The Rockfield Garden is leased and run by Oban Communities Trust, a Community Benefit Society run by and for its members and the wider community. 

We are transforming a disused, previously cultivated food production area into a vibrant and inclusive community growing space, but need funding to realise our vision. This project is rooted in a growing community movement: over the past year, more than 1,100 volunteer hours have been contributed at The Rockfield Garden. The momentum is clear—and this garden will be a living, growing symbol of community action.

The space, located behind The Rockfield Centre, was previously used to grow fruit, vegetables, and flowers for the former McTavish's Kitchens, but has since lain derelict.

What will your project do? Over the last 12 months a 25+ band of volunteers have spend over 1000 hours on Phase 1, preparing the space for cultivation. We are now seeking funding for Phase 2, which will initiate food production and support both experienced and novice growers, fostering strong community involvement.

• Installing fencing and handrails to ensure safety and accessibility
• Building raised beds and flexible growing spaces for communal and individual use
• Constructing a weatherproof meeting shelter and a secure tool shed.
• Providing tools, gardening equipment, seeds, compost, and plants.
• Developing a community composting system to promote circular growing practices.
• Installing bee hives, chicken coops, and a community orchard
• Offering a varied programme of community engagement and educational growing activities, including informal social gardening drop-ins, volunteer action days, and community education.

Why is your project needed? Oban currently has no community growing provision, and local residents lack accessible opportunities to grow, learn, and contribute. As a rural town we are also heavily reliant on imported food, reducing local food resilience and creating disproportionately high food mile loadings. This project will:

• Provide the community with growing space, tools, and support to grow food locally.
• Encourage healthier lifestyles and increased social connection through shared, hands-on activity
• Respond to the pressing need for increased food resilience in the face of climate change and supply chain vulnerabilities.
• Help diversify the town’s food sources, reducing reliance on imported produce and associated transport emissions.
• Create a learning hub to build knowledge and practical skills in sustainable food growing, composting, and ecological gardening
• Offer a mix of communal and some individually managed plots, providing flexibility to suit different needs and abilities.
• Enhance community cohesion and empowerment through participation, ownership, and shared outcomes.
• Contribute to the Rockfield Centre's mission to reduce its carbon footprint and provide wholesome, healthy, affordable community meals.

What positive changes will your project bring about? The Rockfield Garden will deliver wide-ranging benefits across environmental, social, and educational areas:

• Environmental Impact: With an estimated growing area of 1,400m², there is potential to produce 2,000–3,000kg of fruit and vegetables annually. This local production could reduce food miles and cut an estimated 3–4 tonnes of CO₂ emissions per year.
• Food Resilience: In light of climate change and global food supply threats, local food production is a vital adaptation strategy. Growing food locally in Oban will contribute to community-level food security and resilience.
• Health and Wellbeing: Access to growing spaces and outdoor activities supports mental and physical wellbeing. Gardening fosters regular physical activity, better nutrition, and emotional connection to nature.
• Learning and Empowerment: Hands-on education will equip participants with valuable skills in food production, sustainability, and ecological stewardship.
• Community Cohesion: The project will bring together people of all ages and backgrounds, strengthening social bonds, reducing isolation, and building a sense of place and purpose.
• Sustainability: By incorporating composting and circular practices, such as seed saving, the garden will serve as a practical example of sustainable community living. By transforming this underused land into a thriving garden, we’re not just growing food—we’re growing community, resilience, and shared futures.

How long will your project run for? This is a long-term project that is ticking along in Phase 1, but requires substantial funding to move to Phase 2. Once funded, we anticipate c. 1 year to do the required structural works. We anticipate the total works requiring c. 70k, including staff time, but would gladly accept smaller amounts of funding which would allow us to complete the project in a modular fashion.

Our primary aim is to build a safe social/recreational workshop and creative workspace for retired men & women to undertake creative projects for the village and local district. This should assist in improving the appearance of Strachur and surrounding area for the benefit of the local community and visitors e.g. by reconstituting picnic areas that have fallen into disrepair, also by maintaining benches; fences etc. such as those in our community Heron Park and installing sculpture/art works where agreed as appropriate. Similar maintenance and creative projects would be made available to the district  with the involvement of people domiciled within a 10 mile radius. Existing craft and trade skills that 'Shed' members possess would be used to do this, hopefully enabling members to learn new skills as well. Other local organizations  would also benefit e.g. the local Youth/Drama Group where members could assist in the manufacture of costumes and scenery for the regular annual productions at reduced cost.

Like many small rural villages Strachur has an increasing population of retirees. We hope that involvement in local projects - through teamwork - would help in reducing feelings of isolation for the 'older' members of our community by providing mental and physical stimulation, thus showing the 'younger' members of our community that we still have something to contribute to village life whilst improving recreational facilities for all. This approach should enable the facility to be sustained for many years as people become aware of the projects we are involved in. The provision of workshop facilities should also benefit the village Memorial Hall by providing support for maintenance and supplementing the facilities available in the centre of the village. To this end we want to work with the local Development Corporation; the Village Hall Committee and the Organisations that use the limited facilities available at present.

The new sports facility will be suitable for all weather conditions and will enable the playing of various sports on the same surface, including five-a-side football, netball, basketball, and shinty practice.

The Jura Community Development Plan, produced by the Jura Development Trust, highlights the necessity for improved youth and recreational facilities on the Island and concludes that further investigation is required regarding the preferred nature of these facilities.

Developing community-owned and managed assets is strongly supported by national and local policy.

Who are we?

An Tobar and Mull Theatre (AT&MT) is a vibrant multi-arts centre on the Isle of Mull and the only producing theatre in the Hebrides. As a hub for artistic excellence, cultural expression, and community connection, we play a vital role in our island's creative and social ecology. We aspire to be an island voice holding space for island experience in global culture at a time when the voices of rural communities are drowned out. Through our wide-ranging programme of theatre, visual arts, creative learning, and music, we serve: 

• Local and visiting artists, providing space, time, and collaborative opportunities to experiment and grow. 
• All school-age children on Mull, providing arts engagement and curriculum enrichment. 
• Young people, creating pathways in the creative industries and amplifying youth voice through the arts. 
• Older adults, including those living with dementia and other long-term conditions, supporting wellbeing and inclusion.

AT&MT has been recognised as a leader in community-based arts practice by the Federation of Scottish Theatre and as an essential part of local infrastructure by the Mull and Iona Community Trust.  The value of our community outreach, arts provision, and advocacy for rural communities is reflected in the thoughtful feedback we continue to receive from our local community:

“Engaging directly with one’s local community and peers is a valuable experience as it provides opportunity to share ideas and experiences and reinforces connectivity across our islands. I feel that this type of outreach work [AT&MT’s community outreach programme] is fundamental to a thriving cultural ecology on Mull and Iona” – Studio Cèilidh participant

“Because of Mull’s geography and lack of public transport many youngsters have difficulty accessing creative activities [...] The work has been taken to them through schools and location theatre. This ensures equality of access.” – Long-term Community Members

What do we want to do and why?

To secure our future and deepen our impact, we are launching an ambitious development project that responds directly to the needs of our island community. At the heart of this project is the purchase of the land beneath Mull Theatre and extension of the building to include dedicated creative workshop spaces for artists and visiting practitioners and an on-site crèche and early years facility to support families and broaden access to the arts. 

This project is essential to: 

• Protect the future of Mull's only professional theatre and the only producing theatre in the Hebrides. Currently operating under a lease, securing ownership of our site will give us long-term stability and the confidence to plan boldly.
• Address a critical shortage in early years childcare. Mull faces a well-documented lack of affordable and accessible childcare. This project offers a creative, community-centred solution that support parents and caregivers to participate fully in island life and the creative sector. 
• Nurture the next generation of artists and islanders. The crèche and workshop spaces will be designed with care, learning, discovery, and cultural enrichment at their heart. 
• Grow the island's creative ecology and promote the artistic excellence of Argyll and Bute on a national and international level. New workshop spaces will allow us to host more artists-in-residence and facilitate peer exchange. It will also offer affordable rehearsal and creation space for local and visiting artists, and extend our ability to deliver training, workshops, and events that connect Mull and Argyll and Bute to the wider cultural landscape of Scotland and beyond. 
• Strengthen community wellbeing. As we emerge from the social and economic challenges of recent years, this development supports community recovery through creativity, care, and collaboration.

Who are our partners?  

We will work in partnership with: 

• Local early years creative learning practitioners and educators, ensuring the crèche is child-centred, safe, and rooted in best practice. 
• Forestry and Land Scotland, to navigate our land purchase and ensure the building extension is designed with care and attention to our beautiful natural surroundings. 
• Mull and Iona Community Trust (MICT), to ensure the facility is bespoke and meets the needs of our island community.
• Our Community Advisory Group, to ensure that local voices and lived experience remains at the heart of the project. 

We believe that access to the arts, like access to care, should not depend on geography. This project is about more than bricks and mortar, it's about building a future where creativity, care, and community thrive side-by-side. With the support of our partners and funders, we're excited to take this next step in our journey, ensuring that AT&MT remains a place where island voices are heard, nurtured, and celebrated for generations to come. 

In 2021 and 2022, IKDT secured funding to construst 1.79KM of brand new road connecting the North and South of the island. This project has been in the pipeline for many decades and has connected up the two different communities and is allowing our island to thrive as one. Just after we have secured the funding for the 2nd stage of the project, the tar topping, war broke out in Ukraine. Apart from the obvious humanitarian crisis, this had an instant impact on the price of all the raw materials required for surfacing. It meant we had to scale stage 2 back and make do with tarring the new built section of the road with a single layer of tar and leave approx 500 metres of road in an unbound, farm track state. Our plan for stage 2 had been to deliver 2 layers of tar over the new road (1.79km) and the 500m of existing road when we could petition the council to adopt the road as it connects up the existing council road to several council tax paying households. As it stands, while the road is in use and is hugely beneficial to life on the island however the maintenance burden on IKDT is not ideal. The council will not consider adoption until the road is brought up to the standard we had planned for stage 2 so we are hoping to complete the job. Adoption is key to the long term future of the road and indeed to whole community as it will allow unfettered access to all including vital services, emergency vehicles and access to the lifeline ferry service. The surfacing could be delivered in one week but the effects would be felt for generations to come. We would hope to continue the excellent working relationship with A&B Roads department to help deliver the best value for money possible.

Clachan lost its much loved and well used village hall due to terminal decline as an asbestos concrete roofed building with corroded portal flames and was demolished in 2022. The iconic historic B Lited Kilcalmonell church was purchased with a Scottish Land Fund grant to serve as a replacement village hall to arise like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes of the old hall. The hub will allow resumption of the dormant user group activities and will provide a recreational, educational venue for the comunity as well as a resource for private hire. It will also serve as an emergency centre to provide safe haven and meal provision at times of emergency such as has occured on many occasions over the past 10 years particualrly in relation to power cuts, village floods, a freak snow storm, and gales, some of which also resulted in blocking the A83 artery to Campbeltown. We are in the process of renovating the exisitng church building to provide the main comunal space and this work shold be completed by the end of the year.  This is being funded in part by are own fund raising initiatives and by local wind farm trust grants. We then need grant funding for the extension to provides the addtional space for : a catering/kitchen area, a small meeting room, additional storage and toilet provision with disabled access for larger capacity events and activities. It is is this extension project (phase 2) that we are seeking funding from the RCGF scheme as well as other agencies such as the Windfarm Trusts, and other grant funders. We are looking for this construction work to be done 2026-2027.

1. What we want to achieve.

The Cairnbaan Community Trust, (SC052905) wants to refurbish the forestry buildings to provide a community gathering point and flexible workshop and event spaces. We want a community hub that can be used by the community for education such as crafts and Gaelic, health e.g. yoga and other activities, recreation and social gatherings, inside and outside and temporary office space for local entrepreneurs.

Our priority is the smaller of the two buildings which will provide space for community events and workshops, social meeting space, hot desks and a community kitchen. There is external space that can be developed to provide a community garden and outside event space.  It is hoped in the future the larger of the two buildings can be developed to provide space for larger workshops and events.

We have divided the work into phases and we are currently seeking funding for phases 1 and 2. 

Phase 0: This covers the procurement of the forestry buildings under a community asset transfer funded by the Scottish Land Fund and we have secured initial funding for essential repairs to both buildings to make them safe and weatherproof.  The work will start when we take ownership on the 01/08/2025.

Phase 1: Is the refurbishment of the smaller building.  This phase will change the internal layout of the building to create flexible spaces.  This entails new partitions, doors, lighting and upgrade to the heating.  Additional facilities, external and internal, will be needed for disabled and users with special needs.  We also aim to fit a community kitchen and social space for coffee mornings.   Finally we need to replace windows and install new furnishings and fittings.

Phase 2: Is the landscaping and provision of a community garden and outdoor space.   

Phase 3: Is the refurbishment and fitting out of the larger building.  In this phase we also plan to look at energy efficiency improvements, e.g. heat pumps and solar panels.

2. Why our project is needed

Currently there is no community centre to provide a focal point or resources for the community.   There is a risk of social isolation amongst our older population and there are no facilities for the young people in our village.  Community cohesion is being eroded.

We commissioned a feasibility report through Community Enterprise which highlighted the following points. Accessing facilities is difficult without a car, the minimal bus service is a school service with no evening or Sunday services.  There are no shops, medical or other services in the village.  Despite scoring highly in other domains the area falls into the 10% most deprived areas in Scotland in terms of access to services in relation to the Scottish indices of multiple deprivation. Feedback from local people highlighted that a primary need in the community is an indoor social area and meeting space.

3. The positive changes our project will bring

Our vision is to reduce isolation, improve community life and reflect the cultural, environment and historic heritage of the area. The current priorities for the CCT are.

• Bringing the community together to enable opportunities for social interaction and growth.
• Advancement of arts, heritage, culture and science.
• The provision and organization of recreational facilities to improve the quality of life for the community.
• Improving the environment including education about the environment, culture and history.
• The relief of thos in need either because of age, ill health, disability or financial hardship.

The refurbishment of the buidings will provide a focal point for the community and the resources to bring the community together especially those that feel isolated. It will provide resources for all ages across the community and give everyone opportunities for development and a sense of purpose and indentity.

Through current engagement with the local community we have already identified skills and volunteers that can contribute to the refurbishment which will foster community involvement from the outset

4. How long will our project run

Phase 1 and 2 of the project will start on: 05/01/2026

The project will run for: 15 months

Our Business plan and the Feasibility report are available on request.  Unfortunately the file size was too big to attach.

1  We need to repoint the external stonework and do work on the chimneys and roof of the 4 lighthouse cottages.  No maintenance work has been done for many years and there has been major issues with damp and water damage in these 4 properties.  There is a critical housing shortage on Tiree and in particular affordable housing.  We have now 2 of the cottages on long term lease to locals and would like to make the other 2 habitable for long term lease.  We would also like to use this opportunity to encourage young people on Tiree to consider construction and in particular stonemasonry as a possible career.  The team we would use, have experience of running training programmes for school pupils to come and work on the site and learn some of the basic skills of maintainting heritage buildings.  This added value to the project would bring a very useful experience to our local children who are disadvantaged at present from these type of careers activities.  We would also offer to design a long term training programme for a local person so that we could have local skills to maintain the A listed heritage buildings on our site.

2  We funded work late last year on two of the chimneys by a stonemason specialising in these kind of listed buildings.  He has advised that all the external walls, chimneys and roof require work done to preserve these wonderful buildings. The work he did was enough to sort the immediate issues of dampness coming from the chimneys.  There is still some damp coming through the walls/windows.  Also the other chimneys that we did not repair mean that two of the cottages are not fit for long term lease at the moment.  Funding has been recieved by Argyll and Bute Council to allow us to the internal upgrading but we require major funding for all the external works so that we an offer 4 good quality upgraded affordable homes for locals.  One of the issues has been lack of maintenance of all the A listed buildings on our site.  There has been some repair work done but it has exaccerbated the problems due to lack of knowledge.  These buildilng require specialist skills.  If we can train up someone locally to do the basic ongoing maintenance through this project this would be of huge long term benefit to the Hynish Trust.  

3  When we advertised the last cottage for lease we got 5 applicants.  They were all local people wanting to come to live at Hynish.  Our vision is to create a clachan type village at the Skerrryvore Shore Station in Hynish for people to live, play, learn and enjoy.  The demand is there amongst the community for long term affordable housing and this is a relatively quick win to maintain the two leases we have and create another two.  But more importantly to ensure the buildings are presrved for the long term future.  So the refurbishment of the externals of these buildings would be transformational for the Hynish Trust.  It would ensure that these buildings will be fit for purpose for the future.  It also addresses the critical housing situation.  Providing an opportunity for local children to experience somehting different as a possible career opportunity would be welcomed by the school and the community.  If we can also get a local person trained up to be able to maintain all our buildings externally this would be a long term benefit to the community and create much needed local employment.

4  The project would start in March 26 and run to September 26.

This proposal meets RCGF criteria:  supporting locally developed, place-based regeneration projects that involve local communities, helping to tackle inequalities and improving the economic, social and physical environment of deprived, disadvantaged and fragile remote communities across Scotland. It is community led, addresses market failure (inadequate parking and outdoor event space) and will result in strong regeneration outcomes.

The Rockfield Centre is owned and run by Oban Communities Trust, a Community Benefit Society run by and for its members and the wider community. It sits within c. 2000 m2 of old playpark, currently used as a car park

What will your project do? The project will re-surface the existing outdoor space surrounding The Rockfield Centre, resulting in a safe, smooth surfaced area which can be used to bring the community together through large-scale outdoor events, create economic additionality by unlocking new potential for town centre events, and contribute to ongoing town-centre carparking demand.

Why is your project needed? In the recent past, The Rockfield Centre's outdoor space has been used for a range of outdoor events from the Clipper food and drink village (July 2024) and the centre's Spring Festival (June 2025), whilst day-to-day it contributes ~ 50 spaces to the town centre parking supply - a critical resource during peak season. However, the space is badly in need of resurfacing, both to ensure its future as a carparking resource and to enable its use as a safe and accessible community gathering space. 

What positive changes will your project bring about? We belive that this project will unlock huge potential for outdoor events within Oban town centre, with benefits for business, local charities, and the wider community. Our strategic planning has identified a need within the Oban town centre area for a flexible and adaptable outdoor space that can be used by community groups for a wide range of activities - including markets, concerts, festivals, and outdoor theatre. Our outdoor space is the ideal location for holding these events as it is enclosed, easy to secure, and removes the need for disruptive and costly road closures which would be highly advantageous in a town which regularly experiences traffic flow issues and can struggle with capacity at peak times. We believe that Oban and the wider community will benefit from this project as it will open up opportunities which have otherwise not been considered, as there is no alternative suitable town centre area that can offer these facilities. This project will allow these opportunities to be fully explored and realised. The Rockfield Centre is strategically placed at the heart of the town, and is open to all. We have a track record of successfully delivering exciting, inclusive, and novel community-focussed events alongside large contracted projects, and are fully commited to working collabaratively and building strength through partnerships.

How long will your project run for?  Once funding is in place, the works could be completed quickly with actual disruption to the space kept to 2-3 weeks. We estimate the cost to be £60k (based on quotes obtained in summer 2024). We aim to have this work completed by the end of 2025.