Forest Café
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The Forest, also referred to as Forest Café, was an independent social centre and
arts centre An art centre or arts center is distinct from an art gallery or art museum. An arts centre is a functional community centre with a specific remit to encourage arts practice and to provide facilities such as theatre space, gallery space, venues fo ...
located in central
Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...
, Scotland. It was notable for being run by volunteers as a charitable, self-sustaining not-for-profit. The Forest was initially housed at a West Port venue from 2000 to 2003, then housed at 3 Bristo Place in the former Edinburgh Seventh Day Adventist Church, a building owned by the Edinburgh University Settlement until August 2011. It featured a two-room
café A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café (), is an establishment that serves various types of coffee, espresso, latte, americano and cappuccino, among other hot beverages. Many coffeehouses in West Asia offer ''shisha'' (actually called ''nargi ...
with performance space, a single room art gallery named Total Kunst, a radical library named Old Hat Books housed in the café front room, an Action Room for consensus process based organisational working group meetings and internet access, artist gallery spaces, a meeting cum screen printing and crafting room, a rehearsal/music studio, a walk-in freezer, a woodworking and machining room,
darkroom
specialising in alternative photographic process, and unisex toilets. In August 2012 The Forest reopened at 141 Lauriston Place, Tollcross where it continued its activity as a volunteer-run vegetarian cafe with regular free events and workshops, assuming a pivotal role in the revival of the independent community development in central Edinburgh. In 2022 the physical space closed citing difficulties arising from the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
, despite arts activities continuing decentrally.


Background

The Forest organisation itself started in August 2000 with a venue in West Port, off the
Grassmarket The Grassmarket is a historic market square, market place, street and event space in the Old Town, Edinburgh, Old Town of Edinburgh, Scotland. In relation to the rest of the city it lies in a hollow, well below surrounding ground levels. Locati ...
in Edinburgh's Old Town. Relocation to the Bristo Place premises started in September 2003 and The Forest Café opened there in October 2003. After leaving in August 2011, The Forest Café reopened again in Tollcross in August 2012.


West Port


Bristo Place

The building at 3 Bristo Place was constructed during 1899–1900 to a design by Sydney Mitchell and Wilson for the Evangelical Union on the site of a former Baptist Chapel. The category-B listed building has of floor space and was previously owned by the
National Museums of Scotland National Museums Scotland (NMS; ) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government. It runs the national museums of Scotland. NMS is one of the country's National Collections, and holds internationally important collect ...
, who sold the building for £600,000 during 2003. The plaque over the door reflects its subsequent use as a
Seventh-day Adventist Church The Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) is an Adventist Protestant Christian denomination which is distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the seventh day of the week in the Christian (Gregorian) and the Hebrew calendar, as the Sa ...
, who had purchased the building in 1942 and used it until 2000. The space was organised through multiple
working groups A working group is a group of experts working together to achieve specified goals. Such groups are domain-specific and focus on discussion or activity around a specific subject area. The term can sometimes refer to an interdisciplinary collab ...
that were open to the public plus a closed "Core" working group that accepted volunteers who had a longer-term participation. The working groups were run using
consensus decision-making Consensus decision-making is a group decision-making process in which participants work together to develop proposals for actions that achieve a broad acceptance. #Origin and meaning of term, Consensus is reached when everyone in the group '' ...
process featuring facilitation and hand signals, with minutes saved to an online forum called the
BB
. The clerical and financial administration was performed by a paid worker, with building related tasks performed laterly by a Building Manager. The cafe was organised by paid day-time Kitchen Managers (KMs) and voluntary evening KMs, with help from further rotad volunteers. Free events were held throughout the building regularly, including workshops and skill-shares, music, film, poetry, theatre and readings. There was
community darkroom
catering to black and white, alternative and historic process photography. During each summer the venue ran the 'August Forest Fringe', a theatre and alternative arts programme as an alternative complement to the mainstream
Edinburgh Festival __NOTOC__ This is a list of Arts festival, arts and cultural festivals regularly taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland. The city has become known for its festivals since the establishment in 1947 of the Edinburgh International Festival and the ...
. In 2004, the Forest Café became one of only four
internet café An Internet café, also known as a cybercafé, is a Coffeehouse, café (or a convenience store or a fully dedicated Internet access business) that provides the use of computers with high bandwidth Internet access on the payment of a fee. Usage ...
s in the United Kingdom to have won a highly recommended citation in the Yahoo! Mail Internet Café Awards.
A volunteer guide booklet calle
Don't Panic!
was drawn up to record and spread information about how The Forest worked. The
Edinburgh University Settlement The Edinburgh University Settlement (EUS) was a multi-purpose voluntary organisation established by University of Edinburgh in 1905. The Edinburgh University Settlement was part of a larger settlement movement which began in Britain with the found ...
- the charity that owned the Bristo Place building - went bankrupt in October 2010, and it was announced that the premises were to be sold. The Forest launched a campaign to raise £500,000 to try to buy the building, or buy or rent another property elsewhere in Edinburgh.


Pipe organ

The upper floors of the Bristo Place building are the former church, the centre piece of which is a Gray & Davison-built
pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurised air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a Musical keyboard, keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single tone and pitch, the pipes are provide ...
. This is powered by compressed air and has high pipes. It was originally installed at the Chapel Royal, Dublin Castle in the late 19th century and transferred to its present location in 1900. The organ fell into disrepair until mid-June 2007 when the
Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...
annual conference—
DebConf is a software utility for performing system-wide configuration tasks on Unix-like operating systems. It is developed for the Debian Linux distribution, and is closely integrated with Debian's package management system, dpkg. When packages are ...
7—was held in Edinburgh. During the week-long event, sufficient repairs were made by Tore Sinding Bekkedal and others to enable the organ to function again at which point it was played by
Keith Packard Keith Packard (born April 16, 1963) is a software developer, best known for his work on the X Window System. Packard is responsible for many X extensions and technical papers on X. He has been heavily involved in the development of X since the ...
. In 2008–2009, Project ' (English: "Forest Flute") was initiated, a musical experiment to control sections of the mechanical
musical keyboard A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers or keys on a musical instrument. Keyboards typically contain keys for playing the twelve notes of the Western musical scale, with a combination of larger, longer keys and smaller, sho ...
via an electronic
MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...
interface from a computer. ' is the designation of one of the
organ stop An organ stop is a component of a pipe organ that admits pressurized air (known as ''wind'') to a set of organ pipes. Its name comes from the fact that stops can be used selectively by the organist; each can be "on" (admitting the passage of a ...
s available and was chosen because of the connection of the word "
forest A forest is an ecosystem characterized by a dense ecological community, community of trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, ...
". The argumentation of the keyboards was undertaken by
Dorkbot Dorkbot is a group of affiliated organizations worldwide that sponsor grassroots meetings of artists, engineers, designers, scientists, inventors, and anyone else working under the very broad umbrella of electronic art. The dorkbot motto is "peop ...
Alba without any long-term modification of the original organ.


Squatting

The old Forest building was squatted on 30 November 2011 by a group of local residents protesting against the closure of several of the city's independent arts spaces including The Forest, though the protest itself was not affiliated to it. The activists stated that they wished to reopen the building to the public. In its new guise, the space played host to several events and affiliate groups before being finally evicted.


Tollcross

The Forest moved to 141 Lauriston Place.


Café

The café served
vegetarian cuisine Vegetarian cuisine is based on food that meets vegetarian standards by not including meat and animal tissue products (such as gelatin or animal-derived rennet). Common vegetarian foods Vegetarian cuisine includes consumption of foods containin ...
, locally produced
organic food Organic food, also known as ecological or biological food, refers to foods and beverages produced using methods that comply with the standards of organic farming. Standards vary worldwide, but organic farming features practices that cycle resou ...
,
vegan Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products and the consumption of animal source foods, and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. A person who practices veganism is known as a ve ...
food and
Fairtrade A fair trade certification is a product certification within the market-based movement of fair trade. The most widely used fair trade certification is FLO International's, the International Fairtrade Certification Mark, used in Europe, Africa ...
drinks. The menu consisted of salads, wraps, chili, burritos, falafel based dishes and soups. Customers were able to pay for hot drinks for others through a
Caffè sospeso A , ; in Neapolitan ) or pending coffee is a cup of coffee paid for in advance as an anonymous act of charity. The tradition began in the working-class cafés of Naples, where someone who had experienced good luck would order a ''sospeso'', payi ...
system which worked on a
pay it forward Pay it forward is an expression for describing the beneficiary of a good deed repaying the kindness to others rather than paying it back to the original benefactor. It is also called serial reciprocity. The concept is old, but the particular ph ...
basis, this meant that a customer may pay for a coffee for someone who is unable to afford one themselves. Free
Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...
was available for public use, instruments and board games were also provided. There was a free shop where visitors to the café could exchange goods which might otherwise have gone to waste.


Activity

Due to local noise restrictions the café was no longer able to provide late night music or loud entertainment, however during the daytime the café was often host to free performances by local musicians, poets or artists. All events were always free of charge and were never ticketed. The renovated basement was home to a pop-up art gallery space which rotated exhibitions on a twice monthly basis.


Community

The Forest maintained close relationships with other alternative community spaces and socially oriented projects in the local area such as the
Edinburgh Student Housing Co-operative Edinburgh Student Housing Co-operative is the largest student housing cooperative in the United Kingdom, providing affordable housing for the co-operative's 106 student members. The co-operative opened in the summer of 2014. The co-operative ma ...
, and the Swap and Reuse Hub (SHRUB).


References


External links


Official website
*https://www.flickr.com/photos/forest_darkroom
WaldFlöte organ automationSTV - Forest Cafe Moves to Tollcross
{{DEFAULTSORT:Forest Cafe, The Coffeehouses and cafés in the United Kingdom Culture in Edinburgh Social centres in the United Kingdom Tourist attractions in Edinburgh Internet cafés Evicted squats Squats in the United Kingdom Squatting in Scotland Infoshops