Hub Groups Blog Posts

   Souplin is a Scots word for the shoot of a tree.  PCH is oor muckle tree heres awe aboot, this wee branch cawd Souplin, Anglised below      Polmont Community Hub champions the use of the Scots language, which is a significant part of our heritage and culture that we are proud of. Our Scots language group is working to reverse the culturecide committed against Scotland's languages since the King James Bible was first printed in 1611.       The hub's Scots language champion also serves as our transition and sustainability lead. At his insistence, the hub served "stewp" at the Just Transition Burns Night; a broth so thick it was like stew. This event was a treemendous (puns always intended)introduction to the accessible pathways we offer into permaculture skills, nutrient-dense local food, and the opportunity to explore the potential role of community-scale food growing—without the need for slaughtering animals—in the ecological, social...

  Falkirk Writers Circle The Falkirk Writers Circle was founded in 1982 and has been meeting at the Hub every Tuesday since then—over 40 years! In the early '80s, Falkirk had a vibrant arts scene, and the circle formed many collaborations during that time. One notable collaboration is with the Falkirk Camera Club, which has proven to be a successful and long-lasting partnership. This collaboration is currently celebrated in an exhibition at Calendar House, featured in the Falkirk Herald on February 9, 2026.           The Writers Circle also regularly contributes to the Falkirk Herald's district roundup pages, sharing updates about Tuesday nights at the Hub. Over the years, these meetings have welcomed an incredible array of renowned authors, journalists, poets, scriptwriters, and historians. These guests also serve as judges for the year-round competitions at the Hub. We at the Hub are very proud of our Writers Circle. They have been a supportive group...

  Wormery  Emma, is going to champion the Wormery and the Food Waste programme at Polmont Community Hub, she is taking initiative forward and see where we can go with it. She is starting by building the Wormery to combat the food waste we have at the hub. Hopefully, in the future, once we have a garden set up, we can begin using the produce, such as plants and vegetables, harvested from it in our kitchen to create seasonal recipes. We’ll explore what we can do with this produce, including making herbal teas and other items. The scraps and food waste from that will then be fed back to the worms, which will break it down into compost and fertiliser to return to the garden. This cycle will continue, which will be extremely beneficial . Kenny and Emma explored various wormeries available online, but our hub is committed to reducing plastic use. Unfortunately, most commercially available wormeries are made from plastic. The metal options we found didn’t seem very user-friendly. How...

- Land in Our Hands In December 2025, Polmont Community Hub and its land successfully completed the community asset transfer process. This milestone marks a significant achievement, as community ownership of the land is phenomenal. The purchase of the hub and its land was funded by the Scottish Land Fund, and our community is now ready to transform it. We formed a group called Land in Our Hands, which consists of our community's gardenisers and growers, to connect our community with our land as a means to achieve food security, climate justice, and land justice. All our groups at the hub believe that a healthy environment and a stroll among nature should be accessible to everyone. The council designed our field with large stretches of grass, manicured lawns, and playing fields. However, these areas are now considered biodiversity deserts due to their uniform monoculture nature, which supports little species diversity and requires extensive maintenance with chemicals and water. Our ...

  Sharing libraries We have been sharing resources with our community since the day we took over management. We share our space, our help, our knowledge and skills, and we want to formalise this more. Although our booking system works perfectly for hall rentals, we need to expand our other sharing libraries. Our tool library team made research visits to the Linlithgow Tool Library and transition Stirling's Library of Things, which helped expand our knowledge for our own sharing libraries. We are applying for additional support from the Community Learning Exchange to assist with various team visits. As members of the parent organisation, Circular Communities Scotland, we request endorsement, allowing us to share our experiences and foster collective growth and learning. We are affiliated with both Circular Communities Scotland and Social Enterprise Scotland concerning our various sharing libraries. And zero-waste initiatives The first sharing library we established focused on knowle...

  Volunteer of the Month On the second Wednesday of every month, the management team holds their meeting at the Hub. There is always a lot to discuss, including work priority lists, progress reports, and both new and ongoing projects. As part of these meetings, we introduced a vote for "Volunteer of the Month" to be featured in our monthly newsletter, recognising the outstanding contributions of our volunteers. For our inaugural newsletter, the team unanimously decided that there was no better candidate for the first "Volunteer of the Month" than Monty, our zero waste champion. Monty has dedicated more time than anyone else and has been spreading joy and kindness to people of all ages at the Hub since day one. The second nomination is Ena. While we are still developing a method to provide some form of accreditation to our volunteers, we welcome any ideas you may have. As our volunteer numbers continue to grow, we need to find effective ways to reward their hard work...