May 2026 newsletter

May 2026 hub news The first week of May brought added stress. Getting the newsletter out is a challenging task for our already overstretched volunteers. April's newsletter was successfully distributed in time for our screening of the emergency briefing and the upcoming elections. This achievement was the result of a lot of hard work to ensure the newsletter was ready before the emergency briefing and the elections. We attracted some new members to the Hub at the screening.

Throughout May and now into June, we continued filling pots with soil, planting, and giving away sunflowers. We also had several interesting meetings with an organisation called CitizenCoin during May, which is an ongoing process. On Thursday, May 7th, we served as a polling station, which turned out to be a very intriguing experience for our volunteers. More details about that are shared in this different blog post. We had to cancel line dancing and Highland dancing that day since they required the large hall and its beloved wooden floor. Fortunately for us and the council, we didn't charge them for the use of both wings of the Hub. The rest of the Hub can be separated into two wings without being political; we have a left wing and a right wing at the Hub. Coincidentally, there were plenty of votes cast from both right and left wings on that day, according to the results. These votes do impact your Hub—more information can be found in our section about May Day and elections. We are now referring to the left wing of the Hub as the "West Wing," in hopes of maintaining an apolitical distinction between the two halves. The Hub is now part of a network of groups that Strathcarron Hospice uses for their Stronger Communities support. On election day, two Hub volunteers attended a games day for community hub managers at Strathcarron. This might sound a bit unusual for a hospice, but they have developed games that keep communities strong in various ways. Different games serve different purposes, and we attended to explore which of these initiatives we could implement at the Hub. We can't wait to try out the escape room game! We also borrowed the box of tiles again, which we've used previously for talks on tackling loneliness.

Polling day also marked the start of a new group/event day called "The Gathering." This initiative represents the beginning of the Hub's musical journey. Our gardening tool library has unofficially been in operation for some time, and generally, we receive tools back in much the same condition as when they were borrowed. However, without naming names, our wheelbarrow returned looking like it had seen military action! It needs some tender loving care, but it is still in service for now. We have a lot of work ahead of us, and we are learning as we go along—this situation definitely gave us a good laugh. We held a gardening volunteer day where we assembled one of our new planters and further developed our seed library. We held our monthly meeting, which was also one of our successful quarterly meetings—a legal requirement for us. We hope that more people will start attending, and we are working on ways to make that happen. However, it would be helpful if someone outside of the core team could take this on, as all our volunteers are overstretched. Hosting and conducting meetings adds to the already overwhelming workload, particularly since we haven't had a secretary for 18 months. It is clear that the secretarial work still gets done, so whoever takes on this role doesn't have to make a full-time commitment. By the second week of May, watering all our plants had become a challenging and time-consuming task. We were using donated watering cans and lacked a garden hose. Fortunately, the hub has some gardening funds, so one volunteer decided to purchase a hose and equipment to make the task easier for the volunteer responsible for caring for all the plants.

On May 16th, Falkirk Writers' Circle held their annual seminar while a large party took place in the main hall. This is indicative of how overstretched our crew is; there are events happening all the time, and the numbers continue to grow. Somebody must prepare the halls and rooms for events and group meetings, check the bathrooms to ensure there is soap and toilet paper, and clean up afterwards. This includes opening and locking up, taking bookings, answering phone calls, attending meetings, and watering plants. Typically, two main volunteers handle most of this work, but one of them took the last two weeks of May off for a well-deserved holiday, leaving the other to manage three phones and handle various administrative tasks. We found four old tyres behind a hut in the West Wing and transformed them into potato planters at the corners of a brand new no-dig veg bed, where we planted turnips and a lot of radishes, along with a mixture of vegetable seeds that were out of date but grew well in our cold frames. We can't wait to see what these plants grow into!

The CBT training sessions have begun, which is an extremely valuable therapeutic tool that we are grateful to offer for free to our members who wish to participate in the training sessions. On May 27th, Kenny was a speaker at the Village Halls and Community Spaces gathering, hosted by SCVO at the Pyramid in Glasgow. He delivered two long talks about how Polmont Community Hub is successfully tackling loneliness in our community by sharing heartwarming stories of the social interactions benefiting our community, which are priceless. Saving the hub from closure has significantly affected the mental health and well-being of our community. We could discuss the positive effects this has had for days, covering all our groups. We asked group leaders to briefly explain the impact of having this hub open and well-managed, and we received many uplifting stories. Each group shares with us how positively the hub influences their members during our interactions.

On May 28th, we welcomed a new group, a collaboration with an organisation called Open Book, which holds monthly free creative writing classes at the hub. We are now working with them to deliver free book reading groups for the community. The first session went exceedingly well, and everyone in attendance thoroughly enjoyed it, looking forward to the next sessions. And obviously we observed No Mow May again this year, the improvement in biodiversity has been incredible in only one year more on that later