Fae Raploch to Elland Road: Remembering Billy Bremner

The proposed intergenerational and co-community sport heritage project would focus on the life and career of former Leeds United and Scotland international captain Billy Bremner (1942-1997) who was born in Stirling and grew up in the Raploch area. The overarching purpose of the project is to use sport heritage to support community resilience and wellbeing through connecting people of different ages both within and across two communities.

Bremner is widely regarded as one of the greatest players Scotland ever produced. The proposed project would research, curate and connect a range of intergenerational and co-community heritage initiatives focused on remembering Bremner’s contribution to football in Stirling and Leeds.

Objectives:

1. Initiate an intergenerational heritage project between young people from Raploch and East Leeds with older people who knew Bremner from childhood and as a player.
2. Use oral history, terrace songs and inspirational quotes on Bremner to generate new intangible heritage, which would inspire creative artworks based on the memories and songs captured by the communities.
3. Co-create a new community-led online exhibition to be hosted by the University. The exhibit would use the artworks to create a community-led collection of storytelling and heritage artefacts to explore the meaning of “Fae Raploch to Elland Road” as a story of migration, resilience and connected identities. It would also curate a wider public digital collection of artefacts and images related to Bremner from existing museum and private collections.
4. Create a digital heritage trail linked to the online exhibition using QR codes in Stirling connected to Bremner’s life in the city.