The TAC building and programme belong to YOU, so please make the most of them.
Did you know that we need to raise
£10,000
every year just to make The Ardchattan Centre open for use?
This covers insurance, heat, light, cleaning, minor-maintenance and other basic running costs.
THANK YOU to everyone who supports The Ardchattan Centre at monthly Pop Up Tearooms, events and with encouragement.
If you would like to make a financial contribution, please use our bank details as follows:
Name: The Ardchattan Centre
Account Number: 17964460
Sort Code: 80-22-60
THANK YOU
About our community….
We are a busy, bustling Centre and that’s the way we like it!
Located in The Ardchattan Centre in the village of Bonawe, in the parish of Ardchattan and the region of Argyll and Bute,
we are a registered charity (Company Number: SC642989).
In 2019, we raised over £250,000 funding and now, we own our own building and grounds!
Well done and thank you to our pioneering community members who did all this hard work for all of us who benefit from The Ardchattan Centre!
We are determined to continue providing a safe, warm, adaptable and useful space for use by all for many generations to come.
The Hall is run our lovely Volunteers and Trustees; decisions are made by the group of Trustees (please join us!) in dialogue with everyone who wants to see The Ardchattan Centre flourish – please come and talk to us and tell us how you can make The Ardchattan Centre a better place for our communities.
Most of the activities are made possible because people give their time for free, and work kindly with others to get things done; we don’t have pots of money to realise ideas that people want us to do, rather, it works when people contribute and make it happen. There is always a long list of great ideas, but the ones that get done are made possible because people put IN the hours.
We encourage this not-for-profit ethos so that as many people as possible realise that they own The Ardchattan Centre, and they can shape what it does.
For income, we generate ‘surplus-income’ after the costs of running events are met (eg quiz-night, Tearoom, hall hires, fundraisers and donations); this surplus-income keeps us open and operational.
Our Trustees and Volunteers with fundraising skills apply for grants which cover specific costs such as improvements to the buildings, projects etc.
If you would like to give your time and skills, then there are lots of ways to make The Ardchattan Centre even more magical and useful:
– volunteer at our events
– come to our events
– help with maintenance
– make a regular donation
– make a one-off donation
– be an Ambassador, telling people about how lovely Bonawe and Ardchattan are, and the warm welcome that awaits them at The Ardchattan Centre.
click here to see a fly-around of The Ardchattan Centre (old School)
Current Trustees include
- Jennie Larney
- John Campbell
- Ronnie Campbell
- Chris Lavis-Jones
- Breege Smyth
- Alan Kerr
- Jacqueline Mathers
- Deirdre MacKenna (Chair).
If you would like to join as a volunteer, on one of the Working-Groups or as a Trustee, please just talk to any of the Trustees at the events or email us on events@theardchattancentre.org, thank you.
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OUR VISION
…to be a vibrant Centre that engages and inspires people of all ages and all walks of life to enjoy, move to and love this area.
OUR MISSION
…to be a welcoming, positive, creative and enterprising Hub in the core of our community, promoting sustainable wellbeing and healthy growth in the cultures, economies and places around us.
About Bonawe and Loch Etive
The Ardchattan Centre is located in the village of Bonawe roughly half way along the north side of Loch Etive (approx 20 miles long).
Bonawe is located at the centre of the B845 roadway which runs from the Port Sonachan to Taychreggan ferry crossing on Loch Awe, then crosses Loch Etive (at Bonawe) and continues onwards to the old ferry crossing over Loch Creran, providing a key loch-transport link in the main route of the west coast of Scotland.
The lochside village was home to fishing and farming communities, and employees of the Bonawe Quarry and Bonawe Foundry, and had a church, school, bowling green, cinema, reading rooms, general-store-shop, bakery, post office, laundry, ferry and other services, and three (yes three) tenement blocks, as well as streets of houses.
After the ferry stopped running (late 1960s) and the quarry mechanised much of its processes thus drastically reducing staff, population reduced and the village of Bonawe became a ‘road-end’ which some people consider a lesser-place due to an absence of traffic, and which others consider a highly-valued characteristic.
When the quarry made the decision to demolish two of the three tenement blocks, the local authority built a new housing cluster of 26 homes for families from the area; this is called Kenmore Cottages and while it is a very much beloved place, it did not erase the loss felt by many when the Ferry Island and Gullet tenement blocks disappeared.
About TAC (The Ardchattan Centre)
In 1886, the Ardchattan Primary School was built, formally, to provide education and informally, as a meeting-place for the community.
The building and grounds have been at the heart of the community since 1886, providing space for community events and activities.
The school served a thriving community of approximately 1,000 people, mostly families employed by or connected to Bonawe Quarries and Bonawe Furnace on both sides of Loch Etive.
Today around 150 people live in the village of Bonawe with many more in the wider and neighbouring parishes.
In 2016, due to the process of centralising public services, Argyll and Bute Council closed the school and pupils are now either Home-educated or taken by bus to nearby Council-run primary schools 7 miles or more away.
Some softly-gathered statistics (please email events@theardchattancentre.org if you have more solid sources of data):
2020 – approx 150 residents in the immediate area.
Early 1900s – 1,000 residents
Ardchattan Primary School
1886 – 14 pupils
1890 – 54 pupils
1940 – 100 pupils (including 40 Second World War evacuees)
Operated for 128 years until 2014.
The closure of the school impacted the community in many ways; by removing a meeting place for young people in their own community; by out-sourcing education service, and by closing the School-Hall which had been the venue for celebrations, festivities and general get-togethers and formal and informal meetings for residents to self–organise.
The need to travel elsewhere to access basic education and meetings changed the community’s sense of itself from having been its own centre to feeling like it was a satellite of someone else’s centre.
Informal dialogues, semi-formal consultations and community dialogues confirmed the community’s agreement to secure the School building and grounds for community use.
In 2018, Community members collaborated to create The Ardchattan Centre (TAC) as an agency and place for community benefit, and successfully secured £157,000 from Scottish Land Fund to purchase the building and grounds from Argyll and Bute Council in 2020.
Volunteers, working groups and the Trustees are now reflecting upon the first few years of TAC Programme activities (which were heavily impacted by Covid) and working on and delivering plans which support well-being and stimulate growth, encouraging people to build confidence, a strong sense of identity, and contribute to a well-populated community undertaking enterprise and collective self-care.
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Annual General Meeting (AGM) of
Sunday 15 June 2025
Documents:
-
- Agenda of the AGM of 15 June 2025
- TAC Accounts to 30 September 2024
- Minute of 2024 AGM – to be uploaded
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Annual General Meeting (AGM) of
Sunday 21 July 2024.
Documents:
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