An Taigh Osda: Best Accommodation and Best Restaurant

• It was clear from what was said in the nominations and from the sources of the votes cast for An Taigh Osda that this young boutique hotel and restaurant already has a devoted following. This response to the quality of its accommodation and its food was not only encouragingly strong in its local context but drew significant votes from well beyond Islay and from well beyond the UK. Such evidence is testimony to the extent to which a wide range of tastes and expectations values this new hospitality business, heightened now with its triumph over its well established and highly rated fellow finalists.

Inveraray & District Pipe Band: Best Group Achievement

• This award has gone to a group achieving the highest possible recognition – World Champions – in one of the greatest challenges any group can face. Playing together as musicians in highly competitive circumstances and in a form of musical performance also requiring physical coordination and the greatest discipline is a severe test for any group. Inveraray & District Pipe Band is mainly a young group, making this achievement remarkable. Nominations and voting testified to gratitude for its contribution to community life and to the lives of its young people and to its worldwide respect.

Angus Gray Stephens: Best Individual Achievement

• This was a very closely fought and competitive award category and it went to its youngest contestant. The nature of the nominations and the sources of the votes for Angus Gray Stephens demonstrate significant respect for the achievements of a young sailor in a sport demanding a high degree of skill and a fast strategic intelligence. It was also evident that the achievement of national recognition and selection for inclusion in one of the national squads in the cut-throat Topper Dinghy class gave pride to Argyll and hope for future success.

The Robin Jenkins Literary Award: Best Arts Website

• Both the nominations and the votes for the Robin Jenkins Literary Award Website were a tribute to the man whose own achievements the literary award exists to celebrate. The encouragement and support it offers to other and emerging artists was also clearly held in great respect. The geographical spread of the sources of the votes in support of this contestant spoke equally for the cultural reach of Robin Jenkins and for the award that keeps his name engaged with his art and with its development.

Islay Weblog: Best Blog and Best Community Website

• This website emerged the winner in not one but two closely fought award categories, each of which recorded a huge and internationally widespread vote. It was evident in the nominations and in the votes that this website is regarded both by the islanders of Islay, which it exists to serve and by visitors and would-be visitors as an inventive and informative representative of an important place. The fact that this site is so strongly embedded in its place and held in such affection by it is the strongest possible evidence of an exemplary online service, particularly since it is produced by an honorary Ileach in the Netherlands.

Lismore Armistice Day Event: Coming Home Again: Best Community Event

• The strong support for this winning contestant in an important award category reflected the profundity of the achievement. Coming Home Again saw a group of young people led, inspired and freed to explore, identify with and conjure the presence of the lives of people from their place but from a very different time and from an experience one hopes remains foreign to them. The gift to a community of the recovered local lives given new expression and given back was poetic, powerful and innovative in performance and crossed the generations.

Ardrishaig Community Council: Best Community Initiative

• Community Councils are often the Cinderellas of democracy. This award demonstrates the degree of support and recognition that exists widely for a Community Council which has regenerated itself and is energetically setting about regenerating its community. The nominations and the votes for Ardrishaig Community Council came from residents, businesses, officials and from other communities. This creates a picture of embedded and three-dimensional local respect for initiative and of generous acclamation from outside its own community.

Loch Fyne Oyster Shop: Best E-commerce Website

• This award was introduced to focus attention on a crucial aspect of business operations today. It is appropriate that the winner is a business which has led the field in a wide variety of innovations in Argyll and whose successes have they been supportive of Argyll. That those successes have been national and international is a tribute to the efficiency of Loch Fyne Oyster Shop’s online business. The nominations and the geographical spectrum of the vote supporting this contestant paid tribute not only to the product but to the online sales and service that distributes it so widely.

Ride of the Falling Rain: Best Event

• This was one of the most keenly fought award categories, marked by the universally high calibre of the many finalists. Votes came in huge numbers from all over the world. The winner is an event utterly in tune with its place in almost every way. Ride of the Falling Rain – a one hundred mile collective round-Islay cycle ride – works with the resources, experiences and communality in the nature of the island. It marries good organisation with a keen awareness of the importance of the right information being available at the right time, with making friends  – and with a poetic cool evident in its name.

Appin of Yesteryear: Best Heritage Website (Joint Winner)

• This website contributes to its community and to those interested in Appin not only by preserving records of the area but in energetic research retrieving the substance of lives lost and service unrecognised. The site is quite recent and has presentational innovations, which reinforce the chronological development of the area. The nominations and very high vote for Appin of Yesteryear told an interesting story. They showed the ideal but not often found pattern for such a service – supported widely and deeply by its own place, with votes coming from every part of the area and from areas immediately surrounding it.

Arrochar, Tarbet and Ardlui Heritage: Best Heritage Website (Joint Winner)

• This website immediately demonstrates the spread and depth of its coverage with the recitation on its front page of the names of its wide-ranging and evocative townships. The range of researches and the records kept and made accessible are impressive and valuable in perpetuity. Unusually and importantly Arrochar, Tarbet and Ardlui Heritage embraces the recent past and present, the heritage of the future. Nominations and votes for this contestant in the high voting and most closely fought award category of all – ending in a dead heat – demonstrated the strength of its support in its own place and in its own diaspora.

The Dunoon Observer and Argyllshire Standard: Best Local Newspaper Website

• The great challenge for all newspapers today is the challenge of the Internet and constructive responses are slow to emerge. The Dunoon Observer and Argyllshire Standard itself would not pretend yet to have engaged with this. Nominations and voting however, demonstrated less of an awareness of this issue than a very real and widespread respect for the newspaper. It was clear from these that the standard of its journalism is regarded as the best in Argyll’s stable of local newspapers, that it is seen as energetic and innovative in its copy and widely read in and beyond its area.

Crear: Best Music and Arts Organisation

• The many and varied finalists in this award category demonstrated the strength of Argyll’s textured cultural base. It was fiercely contested with high and very widespread voting patterns. Crear emerged fro this as a strong winner. Its nominations and voting together showed a depth of understanding, respect and esteem for the unique service it provides to the creative arts and to the artistic life of Argyll. The marriage of support for artists with the creation of an interface between the artists and audiences in Argyll – all in a magical and remote location benefiting from the awareness the studio brings is individual and successful.

The Walking Theatre Company: Best Potential for 2009

• This innovative theatre company is creating new and organic relationships between people, place, past, present and performance in Argyll and beyond. It is also bringing new performance forms to Argyll with energy and invention. The nominations and the voting patterns for The Walking Theatre Company made clear the widespread appreciation of its freshness and professionalism, now widely recognised in Scotland – and a strong wish to see more. A major recurring feature in its nominations was gratitude for its creative contributions to the development and reinforcement of community culture.

Our Power, Cairndow: Best renewable Energy Project

• This award category was very competitive, with Argyll moving to become a major player in the development of renewable energy technologies. What marked out the winner, Our Power, from its competitors – evidenced in its nominations and in its votes, was that it is a project in tune with the time and quietly delivering energy with real benefit to its community, It was quick to engage in biomass energy generation and has also, enterprisingly, moved to take advantage of the Scottish Government’s prompt to explore the development of small local hydro-electric schemes. It is seen to deliver more than it promises.

Machrihanish Dunes Golf Course: Best Sporting facility

• Competition between the finalists in this award category was very keen – but Machrihanish Dunes Golf Course emerged a very strong victor. Its nominations testified to its excitement of real interest as the first golf course in the UK to be built from the outset within a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The nominations indicated admiration for the way it has worked closely with Scottish Natural Heritage on the development. The local strength and the international reach of its voting support testified to its perceived role in a sport important to Argyll and supporting a powerful constituency amongst residents and visitors alike.

Islay Info: Best Tourist Website

• In a notably energetic and high voting local, national and international award category, Islay Info was, in the end, a clear winner. The site is marked by its attention to detail in the information it provides, the spectrum of interests, resources and facilities it covers and the love of place which, almost on its own, would draw others to come there. Its nominations mentioned help and advice offered promptly in response to individual enquiries and at a level beyond the most optimistic expectations. Both nominations and votes evidenced local appreciation of the service the site provides and its impact on international visitors.

Easdale Island Community Hall: Best Village Hall

• This is an award-winning hall in terms of its remarkable design. It is also a hall that lives a constantly active life in and for its community – usually filled with the music and laughter, stories and songs of residents, guests and visitors. It hosts a lively and respected arts programme and supports innovative local events. From the evidence of the awards nominations for Easdale Island Community Hall and the strength and geographical spread of voting in its support, islanders have pride in and affection for their hall and anyone who’s been there has never forgotten it.

Easdale Island: Best Visitor Attraction

• Easdale Island is the king pin in a cluster of highly competitive local finalists in the ForArgyll awards 2008. The others were its fellow award winner, Easdale Island Community Hall as Best Village Hall; Easdale Hall Arts Programme in the Best Arts Organisation category; and the legendary Easdale World Stone Skimming Championships in the Best Event category. When you put this picture together with residents possessing the gift of light hearts and add the lot to the history and location of this island-like-no-other, it is not difficult to see why Easdale Island attracted a massive winning vote in this category.

RSPB Mara & Breagha: Best Wildlife Website

• This website is a true blog, regularly – and conversationally – refreshed with information and insights into its subjects. Mara and Breagha are two young white-tailed sea eagles hatched on the Isle of Mull. The information this site provides on their development and adventures is heightened by its major innovation. The RSPB has had the sea eagle siblings electronically tagged, allowing their movements to be tracked by satellite and recorded on the website. This enables anyone anywhere to see the widening areas over which the eagles fly. Nominations and votes evidenced the international audience this website has built.