Hay's Way: How rhubarb is helping to revive a small Scottish town

“She has a massive patch.”

The mother of two laughs as she explains that the latest delivery will be transformed into rhubarb-infused soft drinks — part of what she half-jokingly calls a “rhubarb revolution” taking root in the Argyll town.

The rhubarb itself is no joke, however. Dunoon now has an annual rhubarb festival, returning for its second year in July, and Ms Clinch wants the town to become the rhubarb capital of Scotland.

“The plant is not from here but it’s easy to grow,” she says. “We’ve managed to get people growing it in their own gardens and the next stage is plant at a bigger scale and for the festival to be a celebration of that.”

There is, undeniably, an eccentricity to the movement. Yet the root of the rhubarb boom is to nurture something that builds community connection and resilience in an economically fragile town.

Ms Clinch, who has worked in community development for more than two decades, is one of the co-founders of Dunoon Goes POP (DGPOP) an enterprise producing rhubarb drinks inspired by the town’s former soft drinks factory, built in the 1880s by local pharmacist George Stirling. But the initiative, with its own garden to grow plants for making beverages with, also provides a co-working space and hosts workshops and events aimed at reconnecting people with Dunoon’s heritage while creating opportunities for employment.

And momentum is building. DGPOP has recently secured financial support from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

“It’s tens of thousands of pounds, and the majority will go on paying people,” Ms Clinch says, adding that the final figure will be confirmed next month.

The annual Dunoon Film Festival also recently secured Creative Scotland funding for two consecutive years after operating for the last decade on piecemeal support.

“It’s been a great way to use the Burgh Hall and Dunoon Cinema,” she said, referring to two cultural venues that have both faced risk of closure in the last year.

As the old proverb goes, necessity is the mother of invention, and Dunoon’s creative revival has emerged from prolonged economic fragility.

For decades the town has lived in the shadow of what locals call the “American Years”, when the nearby Holy Loch housed a US Navy base between 1961 and 1992. During that period millions of pounds flowed into the local economy, sustaining hotels, taxis and shops. Since the base closed, however, little comparable investment has arrived.

“But it was 30 years ago,” Ms Clinch said firmly, wary of what she describes as a “classic Dunoon image”.

“The whole of Argyll and Bute is officially recognised as an economically fragile region. Fundamentally, towns like Dunoon need lots of investment over long periods of time. You can only bring that investment in when you have people who do the groundwork and apply for funding.”

Much of that groundwork is being undertaken by the Dunoon Community Development Trust (DCDT), which hopes eventually to secure more local assets for community ownership. One of them is Dunoon Pier — one of the last surviving Victorian piers in Scotland — which once welcomed generations of holidaymakers travelling “doon the watter” from Glasgow. Today, the pier stands weathered and largely unused.

“There simply isn’t the cash to work on projects like that right now,” Ms Clinch said. “But it’s not always about huge new developments. At the moment we are focusing on what we know that works and that we can genuinely sustain.”

Over the next 18 months several projects will focus on strengthening heritage and engagement across the town to improve visitor experience.

“Heritage is a really good opportunity to talk to people, to sell things and to give people a good time.”

She said while tourism is one avenue for bringing income into the area, ensuring Dunoon remains somewhere people want to live and work is equally important. Like many rural communities, the town faces the persistent challenge of retaining working-age residents and young people.

Ms Clinch said: “If you work in the creative industries, for example, there’s hardly any infrastructure to support people. We need more jobs, particularly jobs that are structured around childcare responsibilities to help employment for women. That’s an issue across Scotland, but it’s particularly pernicious in small towns and rural areas where you don’t have infrastructure or big employers.”

The challenges are reflected starkly in the figures. Dunoon and neighbouring Kirn have been officially classified as economically sensitive, with more than a quarter of working-age residents receiving out-of-work benefits — significantly above the Scottish average of around 15 per cent.

The problem is not simply unemployment, Ms Clinch tells me, but also the absence of long-term sustainable economic opportunities. While remote working has encouraged some people to relocate to rural Scotland, a laptop in a converted spare room does not automatically sustain high streets or support local supply chains.

In Dunoon itself, business infrastructure has gradually thinned. Desk space in the library has been reduced, business support services are delivered remotely and the town lacks a dedicated business centre.

Sitting in Sinbad’s, a pub a few yards from the Burgh Hall, some locals I speak to are unaware that a film festival took place in the town, let alone an upcoming rhubarb festival.

Ms Clinch said that points to another challenge facing modern small towns: communication.

“What we’ve found is that social media channels have fractured geographical-based communication,” she said. “You can be in the same town but if you’re in different Facebook groups and you don’t get the same algorithm lining up, you don’t get information in a place-based way.”

One attempt to solve that problem is What’s On Dunoon, a community-led digital platform promoting local events and activities for residents and visitors alike. Another initiative is investing in old-fashioned noticeboards.

Connectivity also puts Dunoon in a fragile position. The town is often left out of the national conversation surrounding the ongoing CalMac crisis. The town’s ferry service to Gourock — a key connection to Glasgow — has seen timetable reductions and worsening reliability. Meanwhile, the Cowal peninsula misses out on the Road Equivalent Tariff, a scheme that bases fares on the cost of driving an equivalent distance by road to keep travel more affordable, because it is not an island.

“It’s definitely a source of huge frustration,” Ms Clinch says wearily. “We can’t do anything about that ourselves.”

Perking up again, she adds: “What we can do is put on rhubarb festivals and do stuff that brings people together. It’s tangible, builds community and strengthens the town.”