Leith Community Croft Pavilion
Project Description
Our purpose is to create a happy, healthy, leafy Leith and foster responsible global citizenship. We believe engagement with nature is not only key to achieving environmental goals (e.g. combating climate change and biodiversity decline) but is also effective in addressing mental, physical and social issues. We aim to help locally, through helping individuals and enhancing collaboration between organisations, and widely to inspire change.
Our team achieves this through multiple integrated projects, all of which build community and are based on extensive consultation. Under the aegis of our ‘Croft Carbon College’ (CCC) we liaise with approximately 20 local/national partner organisations and individuals to offer multiple workshops/activities.
We have set up ‘edible classrooms’ in local schools, engaging pupils and teachers in outdoor environmental education centred on food growing. This included syllabus development and work with vulnerable children.
Our achievements amount to turning problems into opportunities. Our charity started when our founder was frustrated by the urban/indoor/supermarket-dependent lifestyle her children had. She addressed this first on a small scale, transforming a concrete backyard using plant pots, flowers and vegetables. The children and nature thrived, and others were inspired. The charity that emerged campaigned with and for the local community to transform two acres of debris-strewn wasteland into Leith Community Croft (LCC) This now benefits thousands of people and provides a home for nature, including pollinating insects. We are now developing the ‘urban croft’ model for wide replication.
On LCC, common good land, amongst other things we provide shared food-growing plots (not allotments!) to about 120 ‘Crofters’ and their families, run a social enterprise tree nursery (providing horticultural training and fruit and willow trees to help green Leith and furnish workshop materials), maintain a biodiversity/nature-play area, and offer picnic facilities and a community café.
We required a permanent home on site, and we looked towards a dilapidated 1914 former tennis pavilion on John’s Place. We identified the potential to benefit the community and consulted locals to nurture a strategic master plan for the repair and extension of the building.
The building now houses our charity’s serviced offices, community café, prep kitchen, farm shop and a series of lettable community spaces directly accessible from the croft.
Our local design team, led by Simpson & Brown, held alfresco meetings on-site (Scottish weather permitting!) The team and contractor, Ashwood Scotland understood that we operate with limited resources, therefore the design had to work hard to meet our brief. Our programme was funding-driven and funds were not always forthcoming due to strong competition. Phasing of works and cost savings were implemented to match funding awards. The National Lottery Community Fund, Community Asset Fund and Regeneration Capital Grant Fund with Edinburgh Council funded the project.
In an area beset by poverty, inequality and substance abuse, resilience is essential. During construction, we encountered problems including flooding, arson attacks and vandalism but we ploughed on and this transformative project has cultivated a permanent home from where we engage and inspire the local and wider community.
Supporting Statement
As a result of undertaking this project, we now have a permanent, sustainable home at the heart of our community.We carried out a series of community consultations to inform development options. Simpson & Brown’s viability study considered options (including demolition and building anew). The preferred option retained, retrofitted and extended the pavilion providing community and training space.
Our local design team held alfresco meetings on-site (Scottish weather permitting!) They understood that we operate with limited resources, therefore the design had to work hard to meet our brief. Our programme was funding-driven, and funds were not always forthcoming due to strong competition. Phasing of works and cost savings were implemented to match funding awards. The National Lottery Community Fund, Community Asset Fund and Regeneration Capital Grant Fund with Edinburgh Council funded the project.
As a result of the project, we have evidenced the following outcomes:
Heritage
- A dilapidated 1914 former tennis pavilion was repaired, refurbished, and returned to the community with its heritage significance retained and enhanced.
Social
- Earth In Common now has a base from where to engage and inspire the community.
- The project supports outdoor experiences for users including vulnerable children affected by anxiety, ADHD, traumatic bereavement and substance-abusing parents.
- Flexible space facilitates all-weather workshops covering bike maintenance to permaculture and the Croft’s Carbon College.
- Vandalism, arson and drug misuse experienced on site pre-construction have ceased.
- Our venue hosts ‘Community Gatherings’ celebrating achievements and encouraging personal and collective action tackling climate change.
- Our pavilion is a catalyst for further regeneration in Leith and beyond.
- Our café provides volunteering opportunities and ‘living wage’ employment.
- Our shop sells croft-grown produce and the kitchen provides training and healthy on-site meals.
- Our play area combats ‘nature deficit disorder’.
- New electrics power our outdoor market, an outlet for local producers.
- The project underpins Earth In Common‘s overseas work, guiding food sovereignty and linking schools in rural Africa with urban Leith.
Environmental
- Carbon release through demolition and new build was prevented. Air-source heat pumps assist in low-carbon operation. Extension benefits from solar gain.
- Carbon saved by people wasting less food, composting more, growing more, and shopping responsibly.
- The sedum roof supports pollinators, and attenuates and harvests storm water for irrigation.
- The new building has facilitated workshops for greener lifestyles covering climate change, energy, food, waste, water and active travel.
- The project raised environmental awareness and climate literacy.
Leith Community Croft generates health and wellbeing and builds community. It fosters healthy outdoor play. It improves people’s diets (and exposure to sunshine in Vitamin D-deprived Scotland) and it is a place where new friendships are established. The following quotes from the community sum it up:
- ‘Leith is a community, but it’s a fractured community and the Croft brings them all together to make a true community.’
- ‘I know I can go there with the kids and they will have a good time. It’s good for everyone in the family; no one has to compromise.’
- ‘We are balancing community needs with nature.’
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