The door to the shop at 82 Bowman Street in Glasgow’s Southside doesn’t stay closed for long. Just off the busy thoroughfare in Govanhill sits a little bright yellow shop front, gleaming like sunshine against the grey Glasgow sky. Proudly emblazoned above the door is ‘The Community Newsroom’. It is the first of its kind in the country. 

Beneath is inscribed an invitation, and statement of intent: ‘Everybody has a story, what’s yours?’

This is home to community magazine Greater Govanhill. Inside, the atmosphere is less like a corporate office and more like a bustling village square. On any given Tuesday, you might find a local historian scanning archives, a group of young Roma people learning photography, and people dropping in and heading out to tell the stories of Govanhill.

This is how news is made in Govanhill now. Not extracted by journalists parachuting in from distant newsrooms, but created by people who live here, for people who live here. The door is always open. Anyone can walk in with a story, pitch an idea, or simply be part of the conversation.

But for years, that wasn’t the story being told about Govanhill.

Reclaiming the narrative

“When I moved to Govanhill in 2018 I was immediately struck by the disconnect between the way Govanhill is often described in the media compared to the reality of actually living here” says Rhiannon Davies, founder of Greater Govanhill magazine.

“It was often described in quite negative terms, but what I found was a really vibrant, friendly community, with loads of great projects, creativity, and people making stuff happen.”

Rhiannon wanted to shift that narrative. She wanted to enable the people of Govanhill to tell their stories in their own words, to find genuine solutions to challenges the area was facing, and for neighbours to feel connected enough to create change together.

With a background in journalism, events and community development, she had the idea of setting up a community magazine. But she wanted this to be community-led. So in this neighbourhood that speaks 88 different languages, she started listening.

For a year Rhiannon went to events, cafés, local businesses, bus stops, community groups – anywhere where she could go and speak to local people, asking a simple but powerful question: What do you need to know?

Those hundreds of conversations fed into creating Greater Govanhill, a social enterprise and a community magazine rooted in what people actually wanted, rather than what she thought they needed. It is a radical new approach to local news, taking a solutions-focused and community-centred approach to storytelling as a vehicle for community development.

More than a magazine

Those conversations became the blueprint for Greater Govanhill’s approach. When it launched in 2020, people saw their ideas reflected back. “They actually listened to us,” became a common refrain.

Since launching, Greater Govanhill has published more than 20 editions of its free, high quality magazine, racking up numerous national awards. The bi-monthly magazine reaches an estimated 12,000 readers through 4,000 printed copies distributed by volunteers. There’s a website with no paywall, a radio show, award-winning podcasts, and now this physical newsroom space where they host events and hold the door open for anyone with a question or a story.

What Greater Govanhill does might look like journalism, but it functions more like social infrastructure.

“I wanted to create something that was beautiful, that made people feel proud when they saw it, that made people feel like they deserve to have something of this quality,” Rhiannon explains.

“People tell me they keep all the issues. They have them on their coffee tables, on their bookshelves. They show visitors, or send them to family back home, or to people who used to live here and moved away.”

Each bi-monthly issue is co-created with local community members, many of whom have no previous writing experience. To enable this, the organisation provides community reporter training for marginalised groups, which enables them not just to tell stories in their own words, but equips them with confidence, tools, and connections they need to make change happen. 

Over 150 people contributed to the magazine in 2022 alone, contributing writing, editing, illustrations and photographs. Volunteers deliver the 4,000 copies of each edition. The majority of contributors were first-time published writers, including young Roma people, Muslim women, LGBTQ+ residents, refugees, asylum seekers, and people from 13 different countries aged between 12 and 89.

“We’re not afraid to do things that journalists don’t usually do. We recognise that the journalist isn’t the person with all the answers” says Rhiannon, “we need more voices, and more diversity in the media, so we bring them in.”

Building community wealth through storytelling

This is how community media builds community wealth. It is reclaiming the narrative of the area, making people feel proud of where they live, making people feel more connected to each other and providing solutions-focused approaches to local issues. Almost all advertisers are local businesses and non-profits. And it is building the skills and confidence of individual contributors.

A young photographer with disabilities whose work was featured gained national exposure, grew in confidence, and secured a college place. A contributor with autism told the team that helping edit the magazine gave him the confidence to pitch a successful book project to a publisher. Eight new volunteers signed up at a community garden after seeing it featured. Through Greater Govanhill’s community reporter training, a young Muslim woman found her voice and decided she wanted to be a journalist, going on to secure an apprenticeship with the BBC and is now working as a journalist.

One reader credits the magazine with saving her life after learning about support for dealing with a problem landlord. Another wrote: “The magazine gave me an insight into many of these unknowns and reminded me that issues we face are being met with love, community spirit and a whole host of amazing people.”

Through telling the stories of the community, the magazine develops empathy and understanding between the people who live there. Neighbours increasingly recognise each other on the street, no longer as strangers, but as people with rich and complex histories, and shared interests and challenges. As one reader told Rhiannon’s team during lockdown: “Reading the magazine makes me feel more connected to both my neighbours and my neighbourhood”.

The power of the network

Creating something like Greater Govanhill is not easy. Advertising revenue for local news has all but collapsed, and funding is scarce, often only for short-term projects.

Seeing that there were other independent community-based publications across Scotland with shared challenges and learnings they could share, Rhiannon set up The Scottish Beacon in 2023. It is a collaborative network of 25 independent, community-based publications stretching from Shetland to Dumfries. Through it they provide peer support, sharing ideas, learnings, and skills, but also it is a platform for the publications to collaborate. 

“When one village hall closes in one community that’s a local story, but if it’s happening in 10 communities, there’s a bigger story here. The idea for The Scottish Beacon is to turn local stories into national influence” says Rhiannon.

No two outlets are the same in the Scottish Beacon. Some have small paid teams while others are entirely volunteer-run. Some operate as non-profits while others are sole traders, some publish in print while others are entirely digital. What unites all these publications is that they are owned and run locally, meaning decisions about what matters, whose voices are heard and how stories are told remain rooted in the community itself.

For members, the value is clear. Julian Calvert, editor of Scottish Beacon member The Lochside Press, said: “The Scottish Beacon project helps in showing that many of the issues we face here – ranging from energy to local democracy – are not just local, but part of a pattern across Scotland, helping us to find common cause with communities ranging from Galloway to Shetland.”

Building the support infrastructure

The success of Greater Govanhill and The Scottish Beacon proved a point: communities can run their own media and communities can be strengthened through it. But they shouldn’t have to figure it out from scratch. 

Recognising the need to support these community pioneers, and the opportunity of spreading the models being developed, in 2025 Rhiannon co-founded Greater Community Media. It supports people to launch community-led media projects, help existing news organisations to become more community-centred, and enables non-media organisations to use approaches like participatory storytelling and training community reporters.

It is dedicated to supporting the development of community-centred media. This approach puts listening, care, connection, and uplifting marginalised voices at its heart. It uses media as a tool to better connect and inform people, strengthening communities and enabling them to create change together. It invests in people’s capacity to tell their own stories, and builds their confidence and skills.

There are significant barriers for people wanting to set up or sustain community media organisations, with founders often facing isolation, lack confidence and skills, encountering high financial risk, and lack support networks. But Greater Govanhill and others in the Scottish Beacon show models that can be learned from and replicated. Greater Community Media exists to lower these barriers, and provide the support founders need.

Narrative power

Community Wealth Building is often associated with physical assets like land, buildings, and energy. But information and narrative power are assets too. Who gets to define local priorities, how problems are framed, and which stories gain visibility all shape what gets decided and done in communities. But when communities have more say over what stories are told, and feel better understood and connected to the people around them, they are better positioned to organise, to collaborate, and act on the things affecting their lives.

Community-centred media is a practical example of Community Wealth Building in action. It shows how by listening to people, responding to those needs, telling stories rooted in empathy, and reporting rooted in solutions, media builds the strength of a community. There is wealth in increased community pride and understanding, and when a community reclaims its voice and its narrative, it reclaims its destiny.

Community wealth building needs a platform for community voices to shape that conversation and decision-making. Greater Govanhill, The Scottish Beacon, and Greater Community Media are building the capacity for that – one story, one neighbourhood, and one network at a time.

The door is open. The stories are waiting to be told.

 

Read more from our series This is Community Wealth Building and what we’re calling for to support Community Wealth Building across Scotland.