Tuesday 21 February 2012

Behind the Scenes at Out of the Blue Drill Hall

As a customer of Triodos, the ethical bank, I was delighted today to attend a customer event at Out of the Blue Drill Hall, a community arts venue in Edinburgh.

I've visited the venue a few times before and was eager to take this opportunity to look behind the scenes! Out of the Blue is a large space full of craft studios and offices for small community businesses, charities and creative entrepreneurs. The building was originally a purpose built military drill hall that was converted in 2002 and incorporates a lot of environmental features such as heavy insulation and solar tubes to heat the water. It's a work in progress still, part of the old firing range is currently being converted into a garden! As part of the event we were introduced to some of the tenants in the building including Take One Action Film festival - that aims to inspire audiences to act on issues they've learned about in the films they've just seen; Precious Metals Workshop - a small jewellery workshop with big ambitions and Dance Movement Psychotherapy Scotland a new charity using dance and movement in therapies of all sorts. We also had a delicious meal provided by the Out of the Blue Cafe project, which uses local and organic ingredients wherever possible and offers a training programme for local young people.

It was wonderful to have this opportunity to find out more about a local communty arts project and how one of the banks I entrust my money to uses it to support work in Edinburgh. (If you're in the UK you can find the projects Triodos supports in your locality using this map).

I also had the chance to see the latest photography exhibition from Edinburgh based artist Alastair Cook which is on show at Out the Blue until 24 February and includes beautiful seascapes and experimental photos.

I also posted about this visit on my new professional blog, where I say more about sustainable banking.

As ever, text in red contains hyperlinks that take you to other websites where you can find out more.

5 comments:

Kay said...

wow..an ethical bank..who knew such a thing existed!!! This project sounds great..something for the community to enjoy. I loved Alistair Cook..I will look at these photos in a minute!!!

Kay said...

so I am assuming that this Alistair Cook is different from the one who died fairly recently?

Crafty Green Poet said...

Thanks Kay, and to avoid confusion I'll just edit to add a note about which Alastair Cook I mean,,,,

Draffin Bears said...

Hi Juliet,

Congratulations to your new website and wishing you well with it.
Interesting to read about the bank.

Happy week
Hugs
Carolyn

RG said...

I wish we had such a setup here ...