Community and charity · Kilmarnock, East Ayrshire · Winter 2025
The Killie Community, Kilmarnock: audio, network and interactive screens for a charity hub
The Killie Community, Kilmarnock FC’s official charity partner and Ayrshire Charity of the Year, needed its hub brought up to date for an expanding programme of training, workshops and community work. Lairds designed and installed the audio, the network and the screens, and trained the team to run them.
Client
The Killie Community
Site
The Killie Community hub, Kilmarnock, East Ayrshire
Scope
Audio, network, interactive screens, video distribution, training and support
Date
Winter 2025
The building
The Killie Community uses football to improve health, wellbeing and employability across Ayrshire, from supporting people living with dementia to work with young people. Recently named Ayrshire Charity of the Year, it needed a facility to match: versatile training spaces with interactive displays and clear audio, connectivity that serves staff and visitors at the same time, and a system that can grow with the charity’s plans for 2025 to 2030.
The brief in one line was technology that works every time without complicated input from the staff, in a building that is busy with programmes all week.
What we designed
Audio runs on Sonance Professional Series loudspeakers: pendant speakers suspended in the high-ceilinged areas for even coverage with no dead spots, and Mariner weather-resistant speakers in the more rugged and transitional zones. Blaze PowerZone amplifiers drive the lot, as reliable during a busy event as a quiet training session.
The network is a Ubiquiti UniFi stack with WiFi 6 access points, giving wall-to-wall wireless for staff and programme participants, VLAN separation to keep the charity’s internal data apart from guest access, and remote monitoring by Lairds. Interactive touch screens and 4K video distribution let the team run workshops, present strategy to stakeholders and deliver education programmes with one-touch operation.
We mapped the user journeys with the charity’s leaders first, so that the system was designed around how staff and visitors use the rooms. Cabling and containment went in before anything else, so the hidden parts are safe and compliant; then the hardware, then the network configuration, and then training for the team so they were confident from the first day. See our commercial AV and network infrastructure services.
This upgrade allows The Killie Community to deliver their life-changing programmes in a facility that truly supports their needs. We are proud to support the Ayrshire Charity of the Year with technology that lets them do more.
Mark Laird, Founder and Managing Director, Lairds
What we handed over
A hub with even sound in every space, a network that keeps staff and guests apart and lets us watch its health from Kilmarnock or anywhere else, screens the team run with one touch, and a staff who were trained before we left. Supported by Lairds since.
What went in
- Sonance Professional Series pendant and Mariner loudspeakers
- Blaze Audio PowerZone amplifiers
- Ubiquiti UniFi switching and WiFi 6 access points, with VLAN separation and remote monitoring
- Interactive touch screens
- 4K video distribution
- Cabling and containment, system design, installation, staff training and support
Related projects
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Ayrshire Hospice capital build, Ayr
AV design and installation across an £18m redevelopment
Scottish Rowing training centre
Projection, screen and weatherproof audio in a cold shed
A charity, club or community building?
Rooms that are used all week by people who did not install the technology need systems that simply work. Tell us about the building.