What is the Hillfoots Community Hub?

The Hillfoots Hub will  achieve three aims:

• Making Clackmannanshire a Tourist Destination.  Firstly, the Hub will be the tourism focus for Clackmannanshire.  The Wee County does not have a visitor centre and rather than being a tourist destination, we merely benefit from passing traffic.  The Hub will celebrate our landscape, history, industry and folklore, highlighting the hidden gems of our past whether that be our castles and towers, or the little that remains from the mills and coal mines.  We are fortunate to live in such beautiful natural geography ranging from the riversides along the Devon and Forth, the glens and hills and the man-made Gartmorn Dam, there is so much to see that we need to encourage our visitors to “Look Aboot Ye“!
• A Sporting Centre of Excellence.  The County, especially the Hillfoots villages and Tillicoultry in particular, lack modern sporting facilities.  The opportunity to build on the Public Park’s rugby and football pitches, by providing changing rooms, an indoor gymnasium, tennis courts and sports hall will provide the community with a centre which can support all of the County’s sport clubs whether they wish an indoor space for gymnastics, mixed martial arts or badminton; changing rooms prior to running or mountain biking in the hills; a safe starting point or stop-off for a cycle along our roads; or rooms to hold lectures.
• An Outdoor Centre for the County.   The hills, glens and our rivers are untapped resources that will benefit from a recognised centre to act as a base for canyoning in the Glens; walking up the Ochils, or along the rivers and dam; or canoeing along the Devon or Forth.  The Hillfoots Hub and our outdoor landscape offers adventure while benefitting from better infrastructure and proximity to our main population centres.

Why a ‘Hillfoots’ Hub?

In 2014, Hillfoots Rugby Football Club began scoping how it could improve its rather dated facilities, but rather than focus on just the rugby club, it was felt that the lack of wider sporting facilities in the area could be addressed at the same time.  This was taken forward by the Hillfoots Community Sport Hub supported by Clackmannanshire Council, and the demand for more facilities from across the local sports clubs became more apparent. The Community Sport Hub members includes such diverse groups as canoeing, gymnastics, karate, martial arts, football, rugby and running as major members with other sporting groups like badminton, weight lifting and hill running being occasional members.  All Clubs see the need to have multi-activity spaces for indoor and outdoor sport, as well as indoor facilities for lectures and courses.  The Council has invested heavily in sport facilities at Alva Academy and these are extremely well used to the extent that demand for evening bookings for all facilities exceeds capacity, yet there are limited facilities in Tillicoultry, or elsewhere in the County

The Club joined with the local community in developing the Local Community Development Plan which was published in 2017. During consultation with the community it became apparent that one of the two major demands was for additional sporting facilities that would benefit the entire community. This was backed up by a youth research survey in January 2017.  This is reflected in the first aspiration for the local area in the Community Action Plan seeing a vision of the village being an “outdoor recreation capital of Hillfoots, a hub for walking and cycling” and the second theme of five strategic priorities for the community. However, having further scoped the feasibility of a sports hub it has become clear that a hub focusing on Recreation and Youth might not be viable on its own.  Advice from our local MP, MSP and Council suggested that the hub should also be focused on tourism and adding to the local economy (Theme 4) and adding to the community’s facilities and activities beyond just sport (Theme 5).

The logo for the Hillfoots Community Hub is currently used by both the Rugby and Football Clubs, it represents all of the Hillfoots area.  The tower recognises the castles at Menstrie in the West to Castle Campbell in Dollar in the East, as well as our other towers at Sauchie, Alloa and Clackmannan, while the Ram denotes the drovers’ path that nestles along the foot of the hills.

Our Partners

The Hillfoots Community Hub welcomes all partners to come together to make the community’s vision a reality:

Support from across the Community

The Hillfoots Community Hub has support from across the community:

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