Festival Evening for Greyfriars Volunteers

Tuesday June 30

 The volunteers at a community project founded by an Edinburgh church had a brush with glamour after they were invited to the awards ceremony of the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF).

The team Grassmarket Furniture, part of the Grassmarket Community Project, had made the trophies given to award winners at the festival. On Friday, they watched as the awards were presented to winners including James Cosmo (of Braveheart, Trainspotting and Game of Thrones fame, among many others).

One of the volunteers, Susan Harper, explained that they had been approached by festival organisers who had seen some of their work online.

“Edinburgh University wanted some trophies for one of their ceremonies, and Jonny (Kinross), our chief executive, put them on social media. The Film Festival organisers saw that post and came to us to ask if we could do some for them.

“We did eight at first but then they came back to us asking for another because there were joint winners of one award.

“Machining the wood and then cutting it to size didn’t take too long, but burning the words on was the most time consuming part. The last one, for the viewers’ choice award, went to the film with the longest name [the documentary Big Gold Dream: Scottish Post-Punk and Infiltrating the Mainstream] and that took about an hour and 15 minutes to burn on.

“The ceremony was brilliant. I think it was just nice for the guys to see the awards being given out. When you are in the workshop building something you don’t think about where the finished product will end up. To see the people winning the awards and how touched they were by it, how much it meant to them, it was great.”

The Grassmarket Community Project grew from a partnership of Greyfriars Tolbooth and Highland Kirk and the Grassmarket Mission, but has been an independent charity since 2010. It helps people who are homeless, who have mental or physical health problems and learning support needs to develop their skills and improve confidence.

Grassmarket Furniture (formerly GRoW) is a social enterprise which designs and manufactures bespoke furniture and other woodwork pieces. The wood is partly sourced from redundant church pews.

As well as the woodwork group, the Project also includes a textiles group, a café and a conference and meeting space, as well as offering a range of social integration and educational activities such as cookery and baking classes, art, drama, IT, reading and writing, sewing and photography.

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