We recently held a joint event for our Rural Wisdom and Local People Linking projects. In both projects we speak to people about the things they experience and what could be improved in their local communities so we thought we should have an event for both projects in Eaglesham to see what we find out.

When we host events like these we are always sure to let the discussions be around the topics that people come up with themselves. Having said that, by now we have spoken to enough people in East Renfrewshire to predict some of the issues that people speak about.

Transport issues are a theme that has come up a lot in conversations with people in the Rural Wisdom project. This is also something that we heard from the Causeway RAMH group and the Fairweather group in our Local People Linking project.

“The bus routes aren’t good around here. The bus doesn’t go anywhere near lots of houses.”

“You really do need to drive around here.”

We also heard some concerns that we haven’t heard so far in our Local People Linking project, like worries around claiming benefits:

“Some older people aren’t claiming the benefits they are entitled to.”

“Just because someone is claiming benefits now doesn’t mean they have ever before. It’s really difficult to find out how to claim benefits if you have never done anything like that before.”

We also had lots of interesting discussions around what it means to be old, and if the term restricts people who see themselves as old:

“It all depends on the person. People can be older and have lots of abilities, more than someone younger even.”

“Old age is older than you are. It’s a descriptive term that doesn’t mean much.”

We will be continuing to work in Eaglesham in our Rural Wisdom project and will be looking at how we can improve the issues mentioned by the group. If you would like to know more about our Rural Wisdom or Linking Local projects contact Kate by emailing kate@otbds.org.