• October 15, 2015

NEWS FROM THE CELTIC LEAGUE

The plans to establish a major centre for Gaelic music, culture and heritage in South Uist have suffered a major funding setback after a funding request to the Big Lottery Fund.

The arts group Ceolas were hoping to establish the £12m centre, in Daliburgh to provide year-round education and performances in music, song and dance, as well as other aspects of Gaelic culture and heritage.

If the lottery application had been successful it would have given the project a major fillip and allowed Ceolas to meet their objective of having the new centre operational by June 2017.

A Ceolas spokesperson said:

“We are obviously very disappointed that our application to the Big Lottery Growing Community Assets fund was unsuccessful.

“Nevertheless, we remain very confident about the project’s viability and are positive about the wide-reaching social and economic benefits that it will bring to our community.”

It is unclear why this worthwhile project was not looked on favourably by the Big Lottery Fund whose supposed objective is ‘to support people and communities most in need and across the country we look to work with organisations which are delivering projects that have been developed on a strong evidence of local need in a community’.

Projects such as that mooted by Ceolas are absolutely vital to sustaining strong local communities in the Western Isles.

The Big Lottery Fund has simply said:

“We do not discuss individual cases where groups may have been unsuccessful in applying to us for funds – as this could cause issues for a group looking to source funding from elsewhere.”

That’s not good enough and they should be more transparent about their determination of funding priorities.

BERNARD MOFFATT

Issued by: The Celtic News

14/10/15

THE CELTIC LEAGUE INFORMATION SERVICE

The Celtic League established in 1961 has branches in the six Celtic Countries. It promotes cooperation between the countries and campaigns on a range of political, cultural and environmental matters. It highlights human rights abuse, military activity and socio-economic issues

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