In Real Life: the Soul of the Junction

Carstairs Junction is exactly what it sounds like; a village built on a transport link. Not far from the much older town of Carstairs, this small settlement sprung up after the railway junction on the West Coast Main line was established in the 1860s. In times gone by, the entire population of the village worked in the busy Carstairs railway station. Nowadays the station has been significantly downsized, but the town is still home to around 1000 residents, a primary school, a handful of small businesses, and newly-founded charity the Soul of the Junction.

Silviya Savova and her family have lived in Carstairs Junction for eight years. Silviya runs a hospitality business and never expected to be running a community organisation. But she couldn’t stand by when the village’s community hall was threatened with indefinite closure. Along with Sylvia Mullen and Vladimir Penev, she devised a plan to revitalise the building, and secured a community asset transfer from South Lanarkshire Council, first for 1 year, and then for a further 20 years.

The vision: the Heart and Soul of the Junction

The goal of Soul of the Junction is to kit out Carstairs Junction Community Hall with a community cafe in one end, and a play space suitable for children with additional needs in the other. The community cafe will run as a social enterprise called the Heart of the Junction, and the play space and community events will be organised by the charity the Soul of the Junction. When everything is finished, the building will house the aptly-named “Heart & Soul of the Junction.”

“It is at the heart of Carstairs Junction, everybody goes past it… some of the older generation we spoke to during the consultation say they remember sitting watching from their windows as it was built.” says Silviya.

The SCIO is already in full swing organising regular events and groups which bring the community together and support its members; there are community cinema days, crochet clubs with added IT advice, a free mental health course and much more.

The building: opportunities and challenges

The residents who remember Carstairs Junction Community Hall being built noticed that it was constructed very quickly; and this points to a key obstacle for the Soul of the Junction. “The community hall is essentially made of cladding attached to plasterboard,” Silviya tells us. “There is no insulation at all, in the roof or in the walls.”

For entrepreneur Silviya, investing in saving the building is an absolute necessity, for multiple reasons. Firstly, the selection of electric heaters in the building are extremely expensive. If the cafe and play space is to survive as a not for profit, the heating bills will have to come down.

The second is a moral concern for the climate; “when we heat the building it all escapes through the roof and we are just sending emissions straight into the sky.” says Silviya. Silviya has always been aware of the need to protect the climate, but has never worked in the climate sphere herself; she has appreciated the training and resources from the Lanarkshire Climate Hub, the Scottish Flood Forum and SCVO’s Growing Climate Confidence programme.

The need to renovate the hall became much more urgent after Storm Éowyn, which blew part of the hall’s roof clean off. For Silviya this was also a reminder of the importance of reducing our impact on the climate; as scientists predict that Scotland will see more frequent and more intense storms as a result of climate change. With more storms like Éowyn in the future, Silviya is concerned that the building will not stay standing without serious renovations; there can be no Heart & Soul of the Junction without a building.

Fortunately for Soul of the Junction, a local wind farm has provided the funding to replace the hall roof with more durable insulated materials. This funding was a lifeline to the charity when it only had a 1 year lease on the hall, and many long-term funds for building retrofits weren’t available to them.

Now, with a longer lease, the SCIO can apply for funds to get a large array of solar panels, and an air-source heat pump, as well as some hefty insulation, to ensure the building is storm-proof, has cheap bills, and is climate-friendly. The charity has applied for the Community Led Local Development Fund and Community Can Do funding, and is planning to apply to the National Lottery Community Fund and Robertson Trust too.

Storm-proofing the whole community

Homes in Carstairs Junction have been flooded in the past, when the banks of the Clyde have broken into the lower part of the village. These floods are also likely to become more frequent as Scotland’s climate changes. The Soul of the Junction has worked with Lanarkshire Climate Hub and the Scotland Flood Forum, to run workshops about protecting against the impacts of climate change. Silviya would like the renovated village hall to be a hub of knowledge and help for people whose homes are flooded, or otherwise damaged by extreme weather, able to direct people to the specific resources they need in an emergency.

Some of the community events that Soul of the Junction run have a climate focus too, and they prove to be very popular. A pumpkin re-use session after halloween provided fun recipes for soups and pumpkin pies, helping families to make the most of the food they buy, and also preventing pumpkins in Scotland from rotting in landfill, emitting methane which is 20 times more harmful to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Another food waste event, teaching locals how to make jams and preserves was so popular that it had to be run twice. At their Christmas Fair in 2025, the Soul of the Junction will host a free, impartial energy advice stall run by Changeworks to help people bring their energy bills down and learn about energy efficiency.

The core of the Soul of the Junction’s purpose is simply to support the community of Carstairs Junction; helping people to get together, be mentally and physically healthy, and be financially stable. Silviya and her team also want to help the community and the community hall to be more climate friendly; but all of the actions they are taking to do this, from building renovation to saving waste pumpkins, will also make life cheaper and easier for local families and for the organisation.