The Grimsay Community Association at Ceann na h-Àirigh is a great place to work with lots going on. So, we thought we’d share with you what this community group get up to and we’ve caught up with Anne Wilson to give us the intel.

‘I use the word vibrant community hub because I think that best sums up what we are.’

With a background in museum work, education, culture and heritage, Anne was the right fit as the Centre Manager for Ceann na h-Àirigh. As a renovated church, come community centre they now have a shop – with local crafts, a café – run by the Scandi Bakery – a Post Office, a local archive, an activity room, a workshop and a boat museum – featuring five Grimsay boats with locally made sails. All of these spaces can be hired for any event. In fact, the entire building can be hired for local gatherings. To go with the current amenities, the Grimsay Community Association has bold new plans for the future.

‘We hope to develop some audiovisual content here to enhance the museum. We’ve got plans to extend the centre which will include creating a purpose built archive to be fully accessible to the public.

We want to extend the café/community hall, which will double our seating capacity, so that when we have events we’ll be able to accommodate more people. It will also mean we don’t need to have waiting lists in future.’

As mentioned earlier, Ceann na h-Àirigh celebrates a display of the specialty craftsmanship of Grimsay boat building. These boats were built by the Stewart family and these were featured in the book Never Broken At Sea. With over 1000 being built, these are all catalogued in the Ceann na h-Àirigh centre.

Sgoil Lìonacelit historically offered a boat building course to S4 pupils. Youngsters had the opportunity to learn skills from the Grimsay boat builder Ronald John MacLean.

Currently young people have various opportunities to engage with the centre.

‘We have students coming on work placement regularly now… and last year we hosted a Primary Seven transition event where all the P7s along with some Sixth year pupils from Sgoil Lionacleit. Everyone had a fantastic day learning lots of traditional skills like mending nets, working with antler, felting, working with clay, and singing Gaelic songs about the sea. 

We’re hoping to repeat this event again in 2025.’

The Grimsay community Association offers something for everyone. There are traditional cèilidhs, concerts, talks, walks, workshops and social events like quizzes, Bingo nights, book sales and pre-loved sales. One strong link they have is with Cardiff University and Guerilla Archaeology. The team come up and collaborate with Grimsay Community Association running workshops where they focus on teaching people how to pass on new skills to others. Anne says that:

‘The people who have been involved in the workshops come back regularly to progress their skills. They’re making fantastic things from antler and the idea is they can then cascade these skills, teach other people and take ownership of working with antler. The themes for the workshops will probably change in the future and have a different focus.

There is a great appetite for heritage craft workshops, so our programme has grown considerably over the years.’ 

As well as activities inside the centre, there’s plenty going on in the grounds of Ceann na h-Àiridh. 

‘We have an enthusiastic and hardworking group of people who manage and look after both their own raised beds, and GCA’s beds, in the poly tunnel, and they’ve been growing produce which we’ve been selling at the centre. That’s a bit of a new development for us and that’s been really successful.

In the last year the team has changed a little bit, so new people have come on board. The volunteers are doing a fantastic job. They contribute a huge amount to what goes on here in lots of different ways.

So lots of new things are happening. We continue to build on what we already have; the boats, the heritage and culture of Grimsay Island, and the needs of the community today.  All these things are really important. 

In Ceann na h-Àirigh there are currently four staff, with a fifth joining soon enough as a Community Engagement Coordinator. There are about 30 volunteers and eight trustees. GCA has over 90 members. Anne mentions that: 

Partnership working is definitely the way to go and I think there’s a lot of interesting possibilities for teaming up with others within the community that are delivering not the same things as us, but maybe similar and it’s great for us to work together more.

We’ve got a strong committee and we work very much together. They’re very proactive and supportive.

‘We’re a community hub. We’re here for the Grimsay people, but we’re also here for everyone from Berneray to Eriskay and beyond.’

To keep up with the Grimsay Community Association’s busy schedule at Ceann na h-Àirigh, take a look online here