To create a Waterside Community Hub with opportunities for fun, food and physical exercise for anyone of any age, along with spaces in which to meet, learn, socialise or put on events.

Waterside Miners Charitable Society (SC003983) was revived by local people in 2022 to help make Waterside Community Hub a reality.

Anyone interested can become a member. It would be great to have you on board.

We receive invaluable support from other charities and organisations, as well as from local councillors and council officers.

Since Waterside Miners Club closed in March 2020, the residents of the Waterside/Woodilee area have had nowhere for events, meetings, recreation, nor social functions. Community life has suffered.

One long-term solution was to restart the dormant Waterside Miners Charitable Society (WMCS), which owned the former club’s premises.

The society’s purpose couldn’t have been more relevant: ‘to provide facilities for such forms of recreation and other leisure-time occupation as are conducive to the improvement of the conditions of living of the inhabitants of Waterside and the neighbourhood thereof …’.

So in March 2022 all former club members were invited to a meeting to discuss next steps, and in May 2022 the charity sprang back to life with a new committee of 16.

Wasting no time and benefiting from the advice of councillors, council officers and other organisations and charities (such as the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, East Dunbartonshire Voluntary Action and Business Gateway), by March 2023 the committee had already brought in architects to advise; formed key subgroups; put on fundraising events; started funding applications; and designed surveys and information leaflets, which they delivered to all the houses and flats in the area.

The building, which had needed repairs costing over £500,000 (not including modernisation) when surveyed in 2019, had now deteriorated beyond economic viability. Raising money to demolish it (some £80,000) is our current challenge. We are halfway there.

A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to our funds or helped fundraise for this project.

For information about what the charity has been doing month by month since it was re-established, please see our progress & updates here.