Tiree’s Annual Community Open Day took place last Saturday the 9th of May in An Talla and was attended by 141 members of the community.
The event was in the format of a marketplace, with various different community groups and local organisations in attendance, giving updates on projects, completing consultation and doing some fundraising for their projects.
Throughout the day open discussion meetings took place surrounding key community projects and issues. Doctor John Holliday chaired the first meeting which discussed the ‘future of care on Tiree’. The second meeting was to discuss the recently formed ‘communications group’ which is made up of interested parties from the Community Council, Tiree Trust and Tiree Broadband, who are working together to monitor, investigate and communicate with relevant bodies regarding broadband and mobile signal problems and developments on the island. The final discussion group was chaired by Donnie Campbell who gave an update on the Community Land Ownership project.
Tiree Trust provided updates on key activity and community projects, and welcomed any comments or suggestions from the public. Various consultation documents were available for the community to have their say. Results from the Housing Needs and Gaelic language surveys were also on display. All of the updates are now available online by clicking here.
Saturday also saw the launch of our new ’volunteer recruitment project’, which we have set up in order to try and recruit new volunteers to help community groups. Before the Open Day we had asked the local community groups to send us information regarding their need for assistance, what the tasks would involve, how often you would be required to commit and any other information that would be relevant. We put this information together and made a volunteer ‘job description’ and encouraged any eager members of the community to register their interest with the advertised roles. More information and current volunteering opportunities can be found here.
Our Youth Worker, Sophie did a great job of providing fun competitions for the youth (and adults) , who were tasked with construction a windmill, which everyone seemed to enjoy. We also used the Open Day as an opportunity to conduct some consultation on equipment for the ‘Scarinish Adventure Park’, which has been developing over the last year.
We would like to thank everyone who came along to the Open Day on Saturday and all of the community, community groups and projects who contributed on the day. We would like to say a special thanks to An Talla committee, who provided the lovely lunch throughout the day.