Kentucky fried? HIE brings community development researchers to Argyll

With the current Scottish weather – seen above, there’s no risk of researchers from the University of Kentucky frying in the heat of the Argyll islands of Jura, Gigha and Bute.

Following visits to key Mid Argyll initiatives at Inveraray Castle, Inveraray Jail, Auchindrain Township Museum and Kilmartin Glen, the Kentucky researchers are splitting into three parties with each undertaking a two week immersion study in one of the three Argyll islands named above.

The programme has come about through the Highlands and Islands Enterprise agency’s Strengthening Communities division, led by John Watt and with the energetic collaboration of Donald Melville, Development Manager at its Argyll base.

Chris Higgins from HIE pointed out that in his own earlier career with the Highlands and islands Development Board (HDB) which HIE replaced, one of the first initiatives the HIDB got involved with was the preservation of the Auchindrain township. This was 45 years ago and the file number was 0009.

HIE’s – and Kentucky University’s – thinking is that there is much to be learned from a central element of life in both Kentucky and Scotland – remote rural communities. The nature, needs and development of such communities matter greatly in both places

Kentucky University’s post-graduate research degree course focuses on the operation of leadership within such communities and on governmental policy at national and local level in enabling them to develop their sustainability.

Argyll was the chosen focus because it offers the Kentucky researchers the opportunity to observe the development energies of the sort of communities they are interested in – but in an environment beyond their own experience. Kentucky is land-locked. Argyll is sea-girt and with a topography that sees island and mainland communities developing historically and continuingly as independent microcultures.

The group on Bute will be led by the academic engine of the research programme, Professor Ron Hustedde. It will be based in Rothesay and focused on recycling – a more complex and necessary business in island communities. We hope that the group will also find the time to make contact with the most challenging community development project yet for the Isle of Bute. The Bute Community Land Company’s planned buy out of the Rhubodach Forest, taking the asset into community ownership, is the driver of a major community sustainability programme.

The Gigha party will be led by Professor Katrina Ricketts (left) and will focus on social wellbeing and on the nature and challenges of leadership in a small community now owning and developing most of its own island. Gigha was the third community buy out under the Land Reform Act Scotland which introduced the ‘community right to buy’ initiative and has been a major social revolution in the way communities now see and seize options for a sustainable future. We hope that the Kentucky party looks at the thinking behind the allowing of the vendor, landowner, Derek Holt, to retain ownership of the little island’s two most profitable enterprises – the home farm and the fish farm.

Jura will host the group led by Professor Bryan Hains and with a major focus on new crofting initiatives, one of Jura’s recent and marked successes. They will also see for themselves the economic impact of the introduction of a fast passenger ferry service straight in to Craighouse from Tayvallich on Loch Sween on the Argyll mainland of Kintyre. The researchers may well try to fit in a heavy-duty diversionary hike to the north shore of the island to see the Corryvreckan whirlpool. One of the Jura party is Amanda Lawrence (pictured below) from Cadiz in west Kentucky, who definitely has the Corryvreckan in her sights.

On Thursday 13th May, shortly before the party split into the three study groups, taking off for their island fastnesses, HIE’s Press Officer, Lesley Gallagher, brought them all to Auchindrain Township Museum in Mid Argyll to learn from the communal responsibility model of traditional Scottish crofting townships.

Auchindrain (pronounced ‘ach-in-dry-in’ and meaning ‘the field of thorns’) is the only such township preserved in Scotland and it is particularly valuable for historical insights because it was never ‘improved’. For a variety of reasons it did not adopt the efficiencies of a more centralised farming model where most other crofting townships did. It retained traditional farming methods and the traditional collective ethic of the runrig and, with the last tenant departing in 1962, was the last operating example of such a township in the country.

It is this unique status that has given this small rural museum a position amongst the very few formally recognised as national collections in Scotland.

During their visit on Thursday, Curator Bob Clark created a verbal portrait for the Kentucky visitors of this tiny community dating from the middle ages and with a 4,000 acre territory stretching in outbye lands over the hills to the long silence of Loch Awe.He pointed out the boundary of the inbye lands still visible across the road where the bracken starts and told of the little family allotments beside each of the longhouses.

Members of the Kentucky party were visibly shocked when Bob Clark told them that this 4,000 stretch was capable of sustaining only 80 cattle. A horse could be sustained at the cost of one and a half cattle and three sheep could be substituted for one cow. This land-to-stock ratio testifies to the poor quality of the land from which the Auchindrain community wrested its barest of survival for so long.

By now the Kentucky research parties are on their respective islands. They will be recording their findings and producing a video on each. Later, back home, the department;s plan is to produce a single master video, combining elements of the experiences, evidence and research results of the overall team, drawing from those based on each of Bute in the inshore Clyde waterway, Jura in the Atlantic and Gigha in the close inshore waters off Kintyre.

We will keep in touch with their progress and will bring links to the video programmes they produce – which will be hosted on the HIE website.

And Auchindrain?

The challenge for the irreplaceable Auchindrain Township Museum is now its own survival in a situation ironically similar to that facing its crofters in the past.

Just as the nature of the land they crofted would not have sustained any significant benefit of the streamlined efficiencies of agricultural improvement, so the museum has to come to terms with the fact that the ecology and the infrastructure of the preserved township cannot sustain mass tourism, even if the arrival of such numbers were likely.

It can – and will – develop significantly under the energetic initiatives its new Curator, Bob Clark, has set in train. It is, though, never going to be capable of generating the sort of income it will need to develop to its capacity, to embed itself securely in the national consciousness and on the itinerary of visigors with an interest in Scotland’s specific culture.

Scotland – at both national and local government level, will have to accept responsibility for copper-fastening the survival of this last authentic remnant of the organisational traditions of this country’s rural agricultural communities.

Three of photographs above, the first, third and fourth, are by copyright holder Lynda Syed. They show:

• some of the Kentucky University party wending its way through the township of Auchindrain
• Professor Katrina Ricketts, who will be leading the study team on the Isle of Gigha
• (Centre) Amanda Lawrence from Cadiz in west Kentucky, who will be one of the party on Jura, with two of her colleagues who will be headed in the same direction.

The second photograph above is by copyright holder Rebecca Martin and shows some of the Kentucky visitors is another part of the township.