The winter snow dusts the pristine green of Hampden bowling club in Glasgow’s Southside, just as it has done for decades. But Graeme Brown knows things need to change.

“There used to be a waiting list to join,” says the club treasurer, “but now the hardest thing is getting people through the door. For bowling clubs to survive they will need to completely change the way they work.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The club’s trophy cabinet. There are more than 800 bowling clubs across Scotland. Photograph: Katherine Anne Rose/The Observer

The gentle sport of rolling biased balls on a flat lawn can be traced to the 13th century, but it was a cotton merchant from Glasgow who developed the rules for the modern game in the mid-1800s, and the city is today believed to boast the highest concentration of bowling clubs anywhere in the UK.

Bowls remains one of Scotland’s most popular participation sports, with 859 clubs and 57,673 playing members across the country. But it has struggled to shed its traditional image of stuffy blazers, rigorous regulations and sex-segregated competition, while local clubs have been slow to attract younger players.

Memberships have dwindled, with the future of individual clubs under threat as volunteer committee members retire and and are not replaced. And the reduced revenue from players means that clubs struggle to fund the expensive upkeep of the lawn and a clubhouse that lies empty for months outside the summer season.

However, across Scotland, and in Glasgow in particular, bowling clubs are undergoing a quiet revolution as these beloved green spaces, once the beating hearts of the community, reinvigorate themselves for the 21st century.

“How do you compete with everything else that people want to do?” Brown asks. “You have to become a community hub, become part of the social fabric again. It’s crazy that we’re only open on Friday nights, seven months of the year.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bowling clubs are trying to shed their stuffy image by switching from ‘out of date uniforms’ to polo shirts. Photograph: Nick White/Getty Images

The 38-year-old, who joined four years ago when the grounds were threatened with being sold off, has an infectious enthusiasm and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the club’s history, including the fact that it is built on the site of the first Hampden Park.

“Bowls is accessible to everyone from five to 95 but it hasn’t kept up with the times, with old rules and regulations and out of date views on uniforms. When I first joined you had to wear a shirt, tie and blazer.”

Brown suggested a switch to polo shirts bearing the club logo: “It took me eight months to get it through the committee but after that everyone bought one. It might sound small but from a club point of view it was massive because they started thinking: ‘Maybe we can change’.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The sedate sport of rolling biased balls on a flat lawn can be traced to the 13th century. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

He also kickstarted the club’s web presence – “When I first joined they didn’t even have an email address!” – and held Give Bowls a Go taster nights last summer. The membership, which had slumped to 40, has since bounced back to 70.

Kelly Settle, 33, joined with her partner, Pete Cavani, 46, after seeing the open night advertised on Facebook. “I grew up in Glasgow and my gran used to play, so I understood it was a big part of people’s life. There are so many clubs in the area where we live but we’d always walked past before. It was nice to be outside on a beautiful sunny evening.”

Over winter, the pair have been to other events at the club, including the regular quiz night. Cavani says: “There are very few events now where young, middle-aged and old folk get together like that. They’re all good folk with good stories.”

Across the city, it’s becoming increasingly common to hear about a gig, or a 40th birthday ceilidh, or a yoga session being held at a bowls club. Bowls Scotland’s development team has been working with clubs, encouraging them to be “more than a bowling club” in order to thrive.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A photograph of players at Hampden bowling club in 1942. Photograph: Katherine Anne Rose/The Observer

North across the Clyde, Partickhill bowling and community club has hosted an influx of events since refurbishing the clubhouse last year, with creative writing classes, parent and baby pilates, and even an artist in residence.

The broadcaster and DJ David Belcher runs Thank Funk its Friday at Partickhill, which he says is the perfect venue: “The whole point is you’re going for a more mature audience, perhaps ex-clubbers who have moved to the suburbs, had children and can’t possibly consider going into the city centre to fight with teenagers at the weekend.”

John Clutterbuck has been the Partickhill secretary for 11 years. While he is pleased with a recent bump in membership numbers to more than 100, and praises the efforts of younger committee colleagues, he is blunt about the challenge. “There is a problem with age,” he says. “It shouldn’t be an old man’s sport but it’s difficult persuading people it’s not just for codgers!”