Rockfield Centre lands £1m grant windfall
OBAN Communities Trust has been awarded £946,000 by the Big Lottery Fund to help develop Oban’s former Rockfield School as a community and cultural hub known as the Rockfield Centre.
Once completed, the centre will feature performance, exhibition and workshop spaces for arts and heritage projects, an enterprise centre including a bakery, training canteen, and hot-desking and co-working facilities.
Chairman Gordon McNab hailed the grant as a ‘huge vote of confidence’ in this ‘extremely innovative project’, and ‘a big step forward’ to achieving their £2.6 million target ‘to open the doors of the main building and turn the Rockfield Centre vision into reality’ by 2020.
The project’s spark, he said, was meeting an elderly client one day in the supermarket. ‘He said he hated the long winter nights, that he would be locked in his house from 3.45pm on Friday until Monday morning. There are hundreds of people like that in the area. That has to stop.
‘Loneliness in the community has to be addressed. The Rockfield Centre will be a place where people belong and will be welcome. This will bring hope. This is why it started.’
On behalf of the board, Mr McNab thanked everyone for having faith in the project, and seeing its benefit for Oban and Argyll. In particular, he thanked project facilitator Eleanor MacKinnon. ‘Without her, we would not be getting this money,’ he said. ‘We cannot thank her enough.’
Ms MacKinnon said: ‘This is a complete endorsement of all the hard work the community has put in. This is a third of the funding for the capital works, but it means we can get up and running.’
The Rockfield Centre will be holding an open day on Saturday September 2, with coffee, cake and a glass of fizz to celebrate and showcase the project. Doors are open from 2pm to 5pm.