A community sport hub in Fife has rebranded to reflect their vision of a healthier community.
Gilvenbank CSH, based in the north of Glenrothes was established in 2015, with the facility playing home to Glenrothes Athletic football club and the local cricket club. With new member clubs joining from across Glenrothes and an emphasis on improving the community’s health and wellbeing, the hub has been renamed Glenrothes Community Sports & Health Hub.
Changing the name
Community sport hubs are a National Lottery-funded programme that provide a home for sport. They bring sports clubs and key local partners together who want to develop and grow the sporting offering in their communities focusing on community-led approaches.
Rose Duncan, hub manager for Glenrothes Community Sports & Health Hub said: “We aim to support the whole of Glenrothes and to enhance and extend the provision of services and activities we offer across sport, social and recreational activities, to improve the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds.
“This includes reaching out to the most vulnerable – people with mental health issues, poverty, health inequalities and other disadvantages.
“Hopefully the hub's new name will reflect our work in this space as well as reaching the wider community of Glenrothes rather than just the north."
The main body of the hub remains at Gilvenbank Park, located next to some of Glenrothes’s most socially deprived areas*. As a result they have been looking to see how they can engage the groups least likely to participate so that more people can enjoy the benefits of sport and physical activity.
Partnership with local pharmacy
With health and wellbeing a top priority, a new partnership with Cadham Pharmacy, a highly regarded pharmacy based in Glenrothes, has been developed. Cadham Pharmacy have a particular interest in bridging the equality gap to make sure everyone lives long and healthy lives, and plan to align some of their work closer to the hubs.
The partnership is in its relative infancy, but progress has already been made with a health pod being installed in one of the hubs changing rooms, to allow the pharmacy to have a presence at the hub and provide suitable information and support to the hubs members and wider community.
Cadham Pharmacy also contains a specialised asthma clinic, and recently held an information night at the hub for members to understand more about asthma, how to use an inhaler correctly, and how they can help others who may have it.
Bernadette Brown, owner of Cadham Pharmacy said:
“This new collaborative partnership with the sports hub will play a vital and pivotal role in addressing public health, health inequalities, tackling poverty and addressing mental health.”
Other opportunities
The hub has been working hard to attract other community groups outside of your typical sports clubs to use the facilities.
With strong links to the local supermarkets, a pop-up community food larder is based at the hub for community members in need. The larder opened during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to offer food provisions for locals who may support.
Andy’s Man club – a men’s mental health charity – now run weekly free-to-attend mental health sessions to challenge the stigmas around male mental health and provide the space for men to talk with others going through similar experiences. A women’s wellbeing club has also recently started.
Sporting Memories sessions occur every Thursday, using sporting memories and physical activity to tackle dementia, depression and loneliness amongst the communities older habitants.
In the pipeline are other opportunities such as parent and toddler classes, walking sports and activities, wheelchair cricket, armchair exercise classes, health awareness sessions and employability support to provide life-long learning in relation to sport, fitness and wider skills to broaden the development of local individuals.
What they said
Rose said: “I am very excited to be involved in introducing innovative ways in which the hub can interact with existing and new service users with the ultimate goal of enhancing collective wellbeing.“
Ross Taylor, community sport hub officer for ActiveFife said: "To see a community sport hub collaborating with various local partners like in Glenrothes is really exciting to see, and for Rose and the board of management to see through a rebrand, an organisational restructure and the capacity building commitments during the past 12 months shows the hub recognise a need and a willingness to better link sport and physical activity with their local community.
"What is worth acknowledging is that the outcomes of the community sport and health hub are all underpinned by a Changing Lives approach following some exciting discussions about the role sport plays locally, and how our club cultures can adapt to be more inclusive and responsive in Glenrothes."
*Based on Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD)
Find out more
- Learn more about what Glenrothes Community Sport & Health Hub do
- Follow Glenrothes Community Sport and Health Hub on Twitter
- About community sport hubs
