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Highland Shinty Memories Groups share development funding awards


By Tom Ramage

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Five Shinty Memories groups are to benefit from nearly £5,000 to enable them to establish and develop work being done in their local communities.

And chances are Badenoch's own group could be in line for development monies in the next tranche.

Badenoch's Shinty Memories is formed in 2019.
Badenoch's Shinty Memories is formed in 2019.

The latest grants have been awarded to Lovat, Kyles Athletic, Inverness, Ballachulish and the Lochaber District Shinty memory groups.

Shinty Memories Scotland secured the funding from Life Changes Trust to build on work already done in a number of shinty-playing areas and offer support for new groups.

It's the first tranche of the total fund of £10,000 Life Changes Trust Awards to be distributed and the funding will enable the recipients to start up their new initiatives, as being done in Inverness, and also to build on work already being done in Lochaber and Ballachulish.

Lovat Shinty club have been awarded £750 towards the cost of installing a large screen in their clubhouse at Kiltarlity which will enable them to host Shinty Memories Group activities themselves and offer other activities within the clubhouse. The club also intends to use the screen for coaching and other activities.

Ballachulish shinty club has been awarded the maximum grant of £1,000 to enable it to complete production and filming of “The Boys in the Gallery”, a play for voices, the primary source for which was the varied hand-written entries made inside the covers of a set of old Gaelic Bibles found in St. John’s Episcopal Church, Ballachulish last Summer.

The entries span a hundred-year period, but most fall between 1914 to 1945. The club intends to film the production for distribution to other shinty memories groups.

Inverness Shinty Club has been awarded the maximum of £1,000 to establish a new group in the city and to purchase audio visual equipment which will enable them to tap into the club’s rich resources in terms of local history and personalities.

Kyles Athletic has been awarded the maximum grant of £1,000 to enable them to purchase a large screen and supporting facilities for their clubhouse in Tighnabruaich to enable people with physical and other challenges to attend meetings.

Lochaber District Shinty Memories Group, which services the whole Lochaber area, has been awarded the maximum grant of £1,000 to enable it to produce six Shinty Memories newsletters over the next year.

David MacMaster, chair of Shinty Memories Scotland, said: “We were delighted with the variety and quality of the five applications we received and all but one received the maximum possible.

"In the interests of fairness and in anticipation of demand we have agreed to set a limit of £750 on our contribution towards large screens for facilities, but the great result for us was that clubs looked at the potential funding and the current circumstances with the pandemic and adapted their applications to local needs.

"Ballachulish were particularly imaginative in the way they made their application .

"We now look forward to the second tranche of £5,000 which we will make available in October and further details on that process will be issued in due course.”

Badenoch's Shinty Memories group is now well established and doing great work in Strathspey and Badenoch and is expected to put an application together for development money through the trust, which was established in April 2013 with an endowment from the Big Lottery Fund Scotland (now The National Lottery Community Fund) of £50 million to support transformational improvement in the quality of life, well-being, empowerment and inclusion of two key groups in Scotland: people affected by dementia and care experienced young people.

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