Community Activism Project

Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the project kicked off in April 2025 and runs until December 2026.

Over the past 18 months Clydesider has worked with community groups and volunteers to capture and celebrate the stories of local community activists and campaigners, past and present.

These community heroes of the past include suffragettes, rent strikers and Red Clydesiders who campaigned for better wages, living conditions and votes for all. 

In more recent years there are the founders of local credit unions and quality social housing; environmental and rural activists protecting local greenspaces and common land; people who’ve set up support networks to help those impacted by unemployment; peace campaigners; football fans who saved their clubs, plus many more unsung heroes and heroines.

To capture these inspiring stories, the project provided volunteers with the opportunity to learn multimedia skills including photography, filmmaking, podcasting and writing, alongside heritage skills like oral history interviewing, archival research and contributing to Wikipedia.

We also worked with local community groups to explore themes of activism through a series of creative workshops, and hosting guided walks celebrating natural heritage and local history across West Dunbartonshire. 

You can find out more about these projects in these short films about Knowetop Farm and this one about our creative storytelling project with Isaro.

And you can check out the booklet we co-created with Improving Lives' History Unlocked group below.

And, excitingly, we also coordinated West Dunbartonshire’s first ever area-wide heritage festival, Our Stories, in May 2026.

This brought together 22 community groups and organisations to host a fascinating mix of walks, talks, heritage activities, open days and events throughout May as part of Local History Awareness month.

There was a staggering 48 events attended by over 1,000 people from across West Dunbartonshire and beyond.

As part of the Festival Clydesider hosted a screening of the local activist films made by our volunteers and the new Take a Minute series . We also took to the road with our travelling photography exhibition and accompanying oral history interviews to showcase some of the activists who have made such an impact in our area.

We have compiled a project booklet highlighting all the activists featured in film, photograph and print - this will be available to download here soon.

And we are currently having an independent evaluation of both the Festival and our Community Activism project and will publish the findings here before the end of the project.

As part of the project, we have also established, facilitated and developed the West Dunbartonshire Heritage Network, to strengthen connections across groups and organisations promoting local heritage. 

For more information about the project, email amanda@clydesider.org.