FIOS COLUMN – 22 NOVEMBER 2016

The last few months have been hectic in the office, with the launch of the £5000 fund as well as the Strategic Plan. We are really pleased to have received much positive feedback on the plan. It really feels like we’re at the beginning of a whole new chapter and with the 10th anniversary just weeks away, I guess we are!

The Scottish Crofting Federation courses held in recent weeks went well, with many delegates attending from across the islands. The Access to Crofting Toolkit course ran across two days and it was great to welcome tutors to speak on topics, such as livestock, horticulture and the legalities of crofting as well as there being an offering of general support on how to grow your crofting business. We look forward to launching a few more dates over coming weeks for courses in the new year. These are likely to include, “Lambing” and “Horticulture”, amongst others.

We were fortunate enough last week to be able to host the very first Community Land Scotland Outer Hebrides meeting. Land Trusts in the Outer Hebrides have informally been working together and supporting each other for a very long time, but it was great to see this group coming together in a more formal setting, with room for sharing knowledge and best practice. Outer Hebrides Tourism presented in the morning, before a visit to the Nature Observatory at Loch Stiapabhat with a talk from Tony Marr. In the afternoon, Orbit Agency delivered a session on Community Engagement from a digital perspective. The event was funded by HIE and is the first of three planned meetings within a 12 month period.

We warmly congratulate Annie MacSween on the lifetime achievement award she scooped at the Gaelic Awards last week. This is very much deserved!