With the increasing strain being put on public services both at local and national level, volunteers are becoming more essential than ever in ensuring that Fort William is a tidy, interesting and fun place to live and visit. Here is just a taste of some of the work our hard working groups and organisations carried out during 2023.
Fort William Festive Fund
Friday November 24 saw another fantastic night take place in the High Street with Santa arriving on the Thistle access Softrack along with his elves, the Fort William Foxes and the Lochaber High School Pipe Band.
There was music and entertainment in Cameron Square and Maddie, balloon modelling in the cinema.
The grotto was hosted again by the West Highland Museum and more than 400 people were counted in the venue in the two hours, a record amount we think so we hope you all enjoyed it.
The grotto looked amazing thanks to Maggie from Highland Hospice for her help with the decorating, Lundavra Primary School for their beautiful cards and paper chains, and the Gallery in the Fort for donating the fantastic Santa’s Railway displayed around the Christmas Tree on the Birching table.
Many of the lovely High Street shops stayed open late as well as The Bay Tree at the station which had a great night.
The raffle sold out and the winner of the Highland Coo was delighted with her prize and couldn’t wait to take it home.
All in all we raised 50 per cent of the money towards the cost of next year’s lights so that really helps to kick start the next fundraising project.
The Festive Fund still need more help to sustain this event every year, the lights won’t get any cheaper to install and it would be fantastic to raise enough money to start to replace the old lights we have.
If you think you can help in any way please get in touch with karen.dean.uk@gmail.com or message us on Facebook.
Fort William Town Team
This year started with our Town Team AGM before going on to plan volunteer meetings to begin organising the season.
We saw a lovely piece in the Lochaber Life by Voluntary Action Lochaber trying to enlist recruits for us and we held our first volunteer meeting in March to set dates for the summer.
We organised what has become our annual monthly Sunday gardening day dates, interspersed with quarterly committee and volunteer meetings.
The 2023 hanging basket project was started in March to obtain sponsorship from local people and businesses and in June, Jill from Ardshealach Lodge delivered the baskets.
The watering was once again taken on by Fort William Window Cleaning and Stephen and his team looked after the plants all summer.
This year we used our newly purchased self watering baskets so it was a learning curve for all of us on how to plant and look after them so next year hopefully they will be as good if not better.
As well as the pots and plots all around the town the Lundavra Butterfly is also an FWTT plot.
This year it was weeded, planted up and maintained by children from Lundavra Primary as well as FWTT volunteers.
The Begonia’s in the plot flourished and it looked wonderful and bright throughout the summer.
Thank you once again to the children for their magic green fingers and we look forward to them helping again next year.
Our gardening days went well and with the small amount of volunteers who came along we got a lot done.
We remain very short of manpower and once again would like to encourage more people to give up a few hours a month to come along and help.
This work would not get done at all if it wasn’t for us giving up our time so all we ask is for others to do the same and help keep our wee town tidy.
Get in touch with secretary@fortwilliamtownteam.co.uk for more information.
West Highland Museum
The West Highland Museum has had a busy 12 months with almost 55,000 visitors browsing the museum collections this year.
On July 31 we had a very special day as we exceeded our largest ever visitor count with 815 people visiting the museum in a single day.
Our Learning and Engagement Officer has been busy working to engage young learners this year.
After consulting with local schools, she developed a series of new education workshops covering topics as diverse as early man and the Age of Empire.
She delivered sessions in style, often dressed up in character to both entertain and educate students simultaneously.
Learning sessions have been delivered to a dozen different schools, including schools not only from Lochaber, but Taynauilt and Appin, with the Jacobites and Victorians being her most popular topics in 2023.
Our dedicated team of award-winning volunteers are essential for keeping the museum open and our visitor engagement team have worked hard throughout the year to welcome visitors.
Sadly we lost 50 per cent of our volunteers during the pandemic, which put pressure on the remaining team and meant the museum was unable to open on Saturday afternoons or Sundays in 2023.
With the aim of recruiting more volunteers the Museum have now recruited a Community Outreach Officer, thanks to funding from the Steps to Sustainability project.
This role is key to making the museum more accessible for the community working with local groups to arrange events, guided tours or to bring the museum into the community at locally arranged roadshows and exhibitions.
We are also keen to encourage people to come along to the museum as a volunteer.
Your help with keeping this amazing organisation running would be well received and the team we have our amazing to work with.
If you are interested in learning more contact Karen on community@westhighlandmuseum.org.uk.