On completion of the ten week cooking course a number of participants have ‘graduated’ to become part of the team, absolutely equal team members, in fact, because of their experience, they often find themselves leading the team, others look to them for guidance and advice in the kitchen! What we have found is that when you offer an opportunity to someone to get involved, what they get out of it is not the ability to make potato and leek soup, but a sense of value, of worth that the society that they are on the fringes of rarely affords them.

We hope that very soon the woodwork workshop will become self sufficient, a real social enterprise, making bespoke furniture from recycled wood, much of it from antique church pews. We hope too to marry that up with a gardening project, tending to Greyfriars Kirkyard and then sending teams of willing volunteers out to other kirkyards, perhaps to people’s gardens if they’re not fit to maintain their garden themselves.

With this in mind we have an ambitious, but absolutely achievable plan to build a purpose built centre on the current site of Greyfriars Kirkhouse. In partnership with Hillcrest Housing Association, Edinburgh Cyrenians and Greyfriars Tolbooth and Highland Kirk, The Grassmarket Mission is at the forefront of a vision to provide better facilities and further opportunities to meet the needs of the excluded and marginalised service users we see. This new build project incorporates 16 flats which Hillcrest will run as part of Edinburgh’s housing stock, a small theatre venue, offices and exhibition space which the church will run to the benefit of the local community and a canteen and training kitchen where The Grassmarket Mission can continue to provide it’s services to the clients who already use the mission. This canteen however has twice as much usable space as the current premises, which seats about 45, tricky when we expect between 60 to 80 people every time we open the door! It also incorporates a large area for a workshop. We hope too to be able to use the larger space to run home-skills classes, debt management seminars and basic education classes. We can do anything with it really! Whatever is needed.

You can see the plans that we’ve submitted here (PDF file, 20MB). planning permission was given in the spring of 2007 and we hope to be in new, fit for purpose, accommodation by Autumn 2009.