Introduction
Communities are not abstract ideas. They are not policy units, data sets, or lines in a manifesto. They are places where people live, meet, argue, organise, care, and belong. They are built from everyday acts of co-operation: putting the kettle on, opening a door, lending a hand, staying a little longer than planned.
This collection from Community Scotland captures that truth beautifully.
In a time when so much of our national conversation feels distant from the realities of people’s lives, these stories bring us back to something fundamental: that the strength of Scotland does not come from the top down, but from the ground up. From social clubs that become lifelines. From food pantries that become centres of dignity. From co-operatives that give people not just services, but a say. From interfaith networks that show us that difference is not something to fear, but something to learn from. I have been aware of the excellent work of Kanzen for Life over a number of years and have seen this organisation grow and develop over a number of years.
What unites these stories is not sentimentality, but seriousness. They remind us that community is not soft. It is resilient, practical, and political in the best sense of the word. These organisations are solving problems the hard way: by listening, by building trust, by making decisions collectively, and by staying rooted when it would be easier to walk away.
At a moment when loneliness is rising, inequality is deepening, and too many people feel unheard and unseen, this work matters more than ever. These stories show us what happens when people are not treated as problems to be fixed, but as partners in shaping their own futures.
As a co-operator, I see everyday how the values of co-operation, democracy, and shared ownership are not just ideals, but lived realities. They are found in the committee meetings that run late, in the volunteers who keep showing up, and in the quiet confidence that comes from knowing a place belongs to you because you help to sustain it.
This document is not just a celebration of what already exists; it is a challenge. It asks us what kind of country we want to be. One where communities are hollowed out and held together by goodwill alone, or one where they are properly supported, resourced, and trusted.
When communities thrive, people do not just survive — they participate, they belong, they shape their own lives.
This kind of Scotland is worth building, it is part of the new direction Scotland needs.
Richard McCready
Political Officer (Scotland), Co-operative Party
Bilston Miners’ Welfare Social Club sits at the heart of the former mining village of Bilston, just south of Edinburgh. Established to serve local miners and their families, it was built as a place that belonged to them in every meaningful sense.
Today, long after the Colliery has closed, the club remains open, still shaped by the people who use and rely on it.
Social clubs have always been resilient and responsive, answering to what their communities need at any given moment. Bilston Miners’ is part of that tradition, now adapting to an evolving landscape where young families and commuters make up much of the village. The club evolves alongside the community and into the 21st century, now with more music and dance events, birthday parties and possibly a youth club on the horizon.
Its importance becomes even clearer when set against what has disappeared around it. The club is the last remaining community facility in the village, with the final pub closing more than a decade ago.
That reality - somewhere to go or nowhere at all - is becoming all too common. Over recent decades, rising costs, falling membership and the loss of traditional industries have all taken their toll bringing about the sad decline of community-run social clubs, particularly in former industrial areas.
When a club like this goes, it doesn’t return. And what vanishes isn’t just a building, but the everyday connections that quietly hold a place together.
This matters because fewer shared spaces mean more people spending time alone. We live in a time where more people scroll on their phones than go out and meet another person, and as the local MP Kirsty McNeill says, this is making us sicker, and it is making us sadder.
Committee member Ross Gilligan talks of an atomisation of society, and the antidote to this is a club.
‘Clubs have an old-fashioned name, but they’re needed now more than ever. Online interaction doesn’t replace in person connection.’
That belief runs through Bilston Miners’: pushing back against this kind of isolation in practical, everyday ways. It’s somewhere you can walk to on a Saturday night, have a pint for less than a fiver, play a game of dominoes, and feel less alone.
Inside, the life of the place tells its own story: a famously bouncy dance floor - said to be one of the best in Scotland - line dancing, exercise classes, bingo, karaoke, tea and biscuits, and family community events. If it happens in the village, it happens in the club.
Clubs like Bilston are one part community centre, one part pub and one part extension of your living room. Doors open to all, people looking out for one another, decisions taken collectively: a community coming together.
From the very beginning, the club movement gave working people experience in self-help and collective ownership: exactly why club members today trust in institutions, given their own role in sustaining them. Being a member gives people a stake and it gives them a say.
Ross puts it simply, ‘when we work together, we achieve more.’ Whether it’s fundraising to fix the heating, weeding the bowling green, or confronting today’s crisis of connection, Bilston Miners’ stands as a reminder that co-operation is not an abstract idea, but built brick by brick, week by week.
If we are serious about tackling loneliness, rebuilding trust and renewing our towns and villages, places like Bilston Miners’ Welfare Social Club must be at the heart of that work. Not something of the past, but a living, breathing part of our future.
In 2020 politicians from across the globe came together in Glasgow for COP. But what was most striking was the buzz around the city of how deeply and urgently people felt about the climate crisis.
Yet one question can still feel disconnected for many: how do we actually tackle it?
The answer, increasingly, is found in communities - and through the places where climate, cost of living and health collide most sharply: our homes. For millions of people, climate change is experienced not as something happening out there, but inside, in a housing crisis defined by cold, damp, mould and soaring energy bills.
It was in this context that Loco Home Retrofit CIC was founded. Established as a home retrofit co-operative, they set out with a simple but powerful aim: to help people make meaningful changes from home, creating houses that are warmer, healthier, safer and more comfortable.
Asking people to change how they heat and power their homes is no small task. It brings disruption, unfamiliar technology and not insignificant mess. The founders understood that if people are going to take that leap, they need to be able to trust in the process and be confident it will deliver real benefits.
But that trust can also be hard to come by. Advice on home retrofit is often generic or commercially driven, while misinformation, much of which spread in bad faith by the oil and gas industry and amplified by hostile online platforms, fill the gaps.
Instead, what Loco Home offers is something refreshingly human. They give a straightforward answer.
Knowledge is exchanged both online and in person, and members are encouraged to learn directly from one another. Through the Open Homes initiative, homeowners open their doors to show what retrofit looks like in practice, sharing candid accounts of what went well but also what didn’t.
Over time, it has grown into a network of more than 320 households, collectively demonstrating that warmer homes, lower bills and cleaner energy are achievable when people are supported to act together.
While Loco Home’s work is often described in terms of insulation, heat pumps and energy efficiency, its deeper impact lies in how it redistributes power. As a co-operative, Loco Home is owned by its members and shaped by their needs, through focus groups and shared decision-making.
Operating locally also allows Loco Home to invest in community wealth building. Local contractors are supported and rewarded for investing in skills, strengthening local supply chains and keeping economic value rooted in place. Members can rely on a trusted contactor, helping them to avoid costly mistakes and, crucially, not be left alone if something goes wrong.
And yet, this work is happening against a difficult policy backdrop. Pathways for homeowners remain fragmented, supply chains are stretched and investment in skills is insufficient.
As Managing Director, Chris Carus, puts it: ‘what’s missing is coordination - support that recognises every home is different, and that solutions must be rooted in place.’ By changing how we heat and power our homes, communities have a practical and visible way to take climate action into their own hands.
Perhaps most powerfully, members speak about how the process has changed how they see themselves. They feel more confident in their homes, better equipped to ask questions, and more able to advocate for themselves.
We often talk about publicly owned power as the answer to our energy transition. But there is a step further than this: power owned by communities themselves. There are few clearer expressions of that than a heat pump quietly running in a back garden, installed with confidence, understanding and the help of our neighbours.
If we are to tackle the climate crisis and if net zero is to mean anything in people’s lives, it must reconnect with the everyday. With politics that begins, quite literally, at home.
This Christmas just off the River Clyde, ninety people gathered in a Church building in Dalmuir, to share a three-course Christmas lunch. Everyone left with a small gift bag of chocolates, hats, scarves and gloves, as well as presents handed out for 150 local children.
We hear so much about Christmas as a time which so often shows that sharpest end of poverty, inequality and isolation, but projects like Dalmuir Barclay Food Pantry are breaking that mould.
What initially began during the pandemic as a small group offering food parcels from the church has grown into something far deeper: a place for the local community, offering quiet hope at a time when too many people are being stretched to breaking point.
As demand increased, the initial group expanded into a wider area, but what volunteers in Dalmuir saw, was the need for a service rooted and shaped by the community itself. While support was still desperately needed, the way it was delivered mattered just as much. People didn’t want handouts; they wanted respect, choice and the chance to help themselves.
In essence the pantry is making it easier for people come in and do their own weekly shop. For £3, customers can choose ten items from fresh and frozen food, tins, sauces and toiletries. As Councillor and Volunteer, Fiona Hennebry, explains, ‘This isn’t about charity - it’s just people coming to do their weekly shop.’ That sense of agency really comes through from one customer, ‘I’m doing my bit. I’m contributing back to society.’
The principle of self-help runs to the core of how the pantry works. They are clear about not enabling people to stay in the same situation, but in helping them find a way out. It can’t be the norm that people struggle to put food on the table.
The co-operative movement has long held that when people help each other, they simultaneously help themselves. There is no clearer manifestation of this than looking around the room of volunteers. Many of the core regulars from the early days are now the ones giving their time to welcome others through the door. Fiona puts it simply: ‘we’re a community run for the community.’
But for many, seeking help in the first place is the hardest barrier to overcome.
"I see people who have fallen on hard times, people who are desperately trying to support their families, and people who just feel they are not good enough."
Those who take the brave first step are also too often met with a fragmented system that becomes a barrier instead of a solution. People are sent from office to office, one for housing, another for food, another for financial assistance, forced to repeatedly explain their struggles while navigating disconnected services.
The pantry takes a different approach; it sits alongside a community café, where food is only part of the offer. Citizens Advice and council surgeries are on hand, helping people navigate benefits, housing issues and mounting bills, and signposting further support where it’s needed. Bringing things all under one roof and meeting people where they are.
Around the tables are people from all different walks of life. Whether its working people struggling to pay their mortgage, single parents struggling with the benefit system or an asylum seeker struggling to find their feet. What is key, is people are not talked down to but treated the same. Fiona puts it as simple as it needs to be: ‘It doesn’t matter your background, you’re very much part of our community, and you very much deserve respect.’
It's all very true that there are big picture problems making people's lives really difficult, from access to food, loss of connection, and the impact of poverty. But it is also very true that the answers were there around the table at Christmas in Dalmuir.
Many of us will remember the powerful image of Sumit Sehdav and Lakhvir Singh emerging from an immigration enforcement van, after the people of Pollokshields stood together and refused to let their neighbours be taken away. In a sea of hostility, it was an image of hope, one that came to define Glasgow, above all else, as welcoming - a fair way to characterise a city that has welcomed more refugees than anywhere else in the UK, and one that takes pride in its rich religious and ethnic diversity.
Interfaith Glasgow sits at the quiet centre of a city shaped by movement, community and difference. It exists to bring people together across religious and belief lines, not in spite of those differences, but because of them.
Founded to serve Glasgow itself, it is locally rooted and accountable to the communities it brings into conversation. It continues a long tradition of interfaith activity in the city, with a clear understanding that this kind of work only succeeds when it is sustained, trusted and built over time.
Interfaith Glasgow represents the friendship, empowerment and joy that can be found in coming together, even down to one volunteers’ grandchild calling their annual magazine the ‘happy book.’ At large community events bringing together up to 300 adults and children, Faith Table workshops invite different religions and beliefs to share arts and crafts that illuminate their traditions. People try on hijabs or turbans, share free food and encounter diversity as something open and human.
Friendship is integral to overcoming fear, but parallel to this is tackling uncomfortable realities, which is why dialogue also sits at the heart of their work. Interfaith Glasgow creates structured spaces where people from different communities can speak honestly about what they believe and how they live, and crucially raise honest questions it can be hard to ask.
This becomes especially necessary at times of increased tension. As CEO, Dr Rose Drew, remarks, ‘There’s only so long you can ignore the elephants in the room when they grow to take up so much space that you can hardly get in the door. Coming together for a natter over tea and samosas is important, but we also need to find ways of addressing the hard stuff.’
Interfaith Glasgow doesn’t avoid difficult conversations but instead welcomes them. For instance, in one extended programme, Jewish and Christian participants met over nine sessions to explore the line between legitimate criticism of the state of Israel and antisemitism. The outcome was not total agreement, but mutual understanding, trust and a sense of having been changed by the process. And, more recently Interfaith Glasgow has been working with partners to explore innovative, restorative approaches to addressing prejudice and community tensions.
This work matters because the stakes are so high. Hate crime is rising, places of worship are being attacked, immigrant communities are being scapegoated, and political capital is too often built on competitive xenophobia. In their recent launch of the Glasgow 850 Interfaith Declaration, Interfaith Glasgow sets out an alternative. Signed by 12 senior religious leaders, the Declaration commits supporters to: nurture understanding across religions and worldviews; work together for equality, peace, and climate justice; welcome refugees; and challenge prejudice in all its forms. It represents a collective promise that, in Glasgow, faith and belief communities will not retreat into silos, but work together for the common good.
The final strand of Interfaith Glasgow’s work is exactly that: co-operation. Creating opportunities for people from different faith and belief traditions to connect with those from other communities and work together to tackle shared problems.
At its best, this co-operation becomes visible to the wider city. Their past community picnics in George Square have brought together more than twenty groups from the Interfaith Food Justice Network to serve free food, hear music from different traditions, and try on each other’s traditional dress. Thousands pass through over the afternoon and see what Glasgow looks like when communities work side by side.
But it is important to note that interfaith work cannot just be switched on in a crisis. It depends on trust built over years, so that when tensions reach fever pitch, there’s already a foundation to stand on.
Losing that infrastructure would be devastating, and rebuilding it far harder than sustaining it now. Speaking with Rose it is so clear of how much more Interfaith Glasgow wants to do, but like many other interfaith organisations, they are up against it. In a climate where cohesion capacity has been undermined ideologically and structurally, grassroots networks have been left severely overstretched, under-resourced and struggling for funding.
In uncertain times, we need to look to our communities, and organisations like Interfaith Glasgow do just that. The ways in which we build stronger, more resilient communities is through investing in them.
Reminding ourselves of what unites us is vital, but it’s also important that we don’t shy away from what makes us different. If anything, it’s more important now than ever that we understand and celebrate those differences. Tea and samosas are just the beginning.
Stobswell West, Dundee, is an area that until now has had no assets for the community, but this is soon all to change. Kanzen for Life is transforming an old flooring shop into a hub that, through connection and movement, looks to empower local residents to change their community.
Founded in 2009, Kanzen Karate has gone on to produce and coach athletes at the highest levels of world karate, including World Champions, and to host the WUKF World Karate Championships twice - bringing tens of millions of pounds to their local economy.
These achievements have placed Kanzen as a dominant force in world Karate. But rather than bask in the glory of these accolades, as coronavirus pandemic restrictions were removed, and sports organisations reopened their doors, Kanzen didn’t see levels of activity rise back to their pre-pandemic levels. Whilst working out what they could do to bring more people into their activity, they reflected that what they had to offer their community went beyond Karate classes on an evening. That through using movement and connection, they could create change in society.
By becoming Kanzen for Life, they have been able to reach more broadly into their community, becoming an organisation that supports members of the community at whatever point in life they come through their doors.
As Roy Kanzen’s founder and Chief Officer recalls, “We have a woman who comes in to do our functional movement session, making sure she keeps more of her movement for longer. She’s in her late 60’s and her grandkids are also coming in to do our kids' sessions.”
Roy takes a view that Kanzen has a role to play in taking on the challenges currently being faced, but also in preventing the issues of the future.
“We are keeping the older members of our community independent for longer but also taking on a lack of movement at a young age. We are doing this because it will mean our kids will lead happier, healthier lives, which aren’t filled with the health problems that have their roots in childhood inactivity.”
For organisations like Kanzen, many funding sources are one-off, infrequent, painfully time-limited, or prioritise ticking boxes over sustained societal change.
Kanzen knows that, at the core of their success, has been their consistency, which has enabled them to build and maintain the trust of their community. Residents can find a helping hand, whether they attend a session weekly or pop in once in a while. They don’t need to wait for resources to reappear once a funding cycle kicks in again. This consistency gives their community support in all facets of their lives.
For Kanzen, when their community faces a challenge, Kanzen faces a challenge. With no specialist primary school PE teachers in their area, Kanzen has worked to fill that void. With the trust of their community and the skills to deliver, in the last year, Kanzen’s specialist coaches have coached ten thousand primary school pupils through structured sessions in activity.
As they look to the future, having secured £ 1 million to transform a unit that used to be home to a flooring shop into a community hub, Kanzen are making plans to earn the trust of even more of their neighbours. A “if you build it, they will come” isn’t Kanzen’s attitude.
They know they have a time-intensive process ahead. Even so, there is a simple and proven approach that Roy will be deploying “knock on their door, engage folk, bring them into the centre, give them a cup of tea, hold their hand, have a chat”. This approach is rooted in a principle that trust is earned through connection and maintained through consistency.
These experiences raise a challenge for politics to take a long-term view that would ensure that we all live healthier and more connected lives. Kanzen for Life is proof that it doesn’t matter how you bring people together, but by being rooted in the community, and a consistent presence that people know they can rely on through connection, we can all have ownership over the direction of our own lives and the collective future of the places we call home.
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