Rosie Rutherford and Isle of Coll Play Park Committee

We fundraised it by ourselves, we dug the holes by ourselves, we got the dirt in our fingernails and splinters from the wood, it’s all completely built by the people of Coll for the people of Coll.

The Isle of Coll, a small Hebridean island nearly 50 miles off the west coast of Scotland, has a population of 160 year-round residents – including many families with young children. For years, there was nowhere on the island dedicated to allowing these children an open place to play and have fun.

In October 2019, a group of island residents formed to change that. Throughout the next 3 years and despite setbacks through the pandemic, the committee raised funding through events like dances and quizzes, and sparked donations from members of the island community. Through their efforts, the children of Coll now have a beautiful new public play park built right on the grounds of the community centre, An Cridhe, a Gaelic phrase that translates to ‘The Heart’.

Rosie Rutherford

“When I first got involved in the play park, I had just found out I was pregnant, but nobody else even knew. I went along to the meeting where they said they needed someone to take over the play parks, so I took it on thinking that I will probably need a play park in the future. I suppose for me, it's a project that has been around as long as I’ve had kids. From the beginning, this has been an important project for us to see evolve and come to life.

We fundraised through Covid, so quite a few of the big fundraising events ended up being online – it became a nice way to bring people together digitally during the pandemic. Over half of our fundraising was from the local community. In small communities, sometimes you find that things upset people easily, but in this case, everyone has been a part of helping. It was really nice to be part of a project that everybody was really excited about.”

Andrew Robertson

“It’s nice to have a place, a hub for the children to get together. The community hall has an indoor space with a toddlers’ group, but now that it’s hotter and sunnier for the summer, we can let them outside and leave them to their own devices.”

Richie Martindale

“The play park has brought people together. When we held online quizzes through Zoom, we had people joining in not just from Coll, but people with connections to the island from Glasgow, Edinburgh and further afield – 60 people logging in to play bingo for the play park. Initially, we had funds set by for construction, but the builders could not complete the project in the timescale we were looking for, so we rolled our sleeves up and built it ourselves.”

Kylie Langford

“There’s something magical about kids in a play park, particularly for an isolated community with a small number of kids. You can see it almost anywhere in the village, so it draws visitors in that play with the local kids. If you meet new families on the beach, the kids don’t necessarily interact. But when you’re at the play park, they all play together. Just looking at it makes me feel how proud I am to be part of the community that built it completely by themselves. We fundraised it by ourselves, we dug the holes by ourselves, we got the dirt in our fingernails and splinters from the wood, it’s all completely built by the people of Coll for the people of Coll.”

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