For Argyll

For Argyll’s endgame is to see an online multimedia information and communications service, created and developed by Argyll communities, serving all of the local authority area of Argyll and Bute, supporting everyone anywhere with an interest in anything to do with Argyll.

• Out There For Argyll, the first stage, funded by the Scottish Community Foundation, is just that: out there - online, for Argyll. Over a two year period, twelve Argyll communities - geographic communities and communities of interest - will use blogging, messaging, podcasts and video sharing to speak for themselves and to themselves. Anyone anywhere with an interest in Argyll will be welcome to get involved as actively and creatively as they like. Statutory and other organisations with responsibility for service delivery in Argyll will be invited to use the service and supported in doing so. Other communities wishing to be a part of this initiative as soon as possible will be enabled to do so as appropriate.

Why is this important?

• Argyll is historically, archaeologically, culturally, politically, naturally and scenically rich. But it’s far more impenetrable than you’d expect for a place whose territory begins on Glasgow’s north western doorstep. With only three roads into its vast landmass, the connections between Argyll and the outside world are slender and vulnerable. The connections between one community another within Argyll are all but non-existent - bedevilled by mountains, long sea lochs and inland lochs and the journey times they dictate.
• There is no Argyll-wide news service in any medium. This project will seed such a service - community-generated, community-fed and community managed.
• Argyll also suffers from an uncertainty over its territory - reorganisation of local authority boundaries has seen the historical Argyll - which includes Glencoe and Ardnamurchan - adrift from the area now managed by Argyll and Bute Council.
• Argyll’s name comes and goes bewilderingly from the titles of agencies responsible for its variety of services. This critically undermines its identity, weakening the affinity with place that supports aspiration and ambition.
• This project deploys today’s communications to create and support cross-community connections never possible before and crucial to the development of a felt and informed sense of place in people who live here.

Out There For Argyll is managed by Radio Fyneside CIC and will benefit from the coming incorporation of a sister company, Fyneside Media Ltd, recently granted charitable status by OSCR. Argyll and Bute Council and Argyll and Bute Community Planning Partnership are supportive of the aims of the initiative.