Soup kitchen set to become learning and drama centre

A CITY community group is to plough £1.5 million into transforming a former soup kitchen into a state-of-the-art learning and drama centre.

The Grassmarket Community Project has lodged a planning application to transform Greyfriars Kirkhouse into a community centre with classrooms, workshops and a theatre.

The new building extension, which will more than double the size of the existing Kirkhouse at the Candlemaker Row roundabout, will also allow the group's leaders to let out the new hall and raise revenue.

Grassmarket Mission, which set up the Grassmarket Community Project, has been helping homeless people since the late 1800s, but now also plans to make the new centre a community hub.

So far around 1.3 million of the 1.5m needed has been raised and the project is nearing the final stages of a Big Lottery grant, which looks to complete the funding.

Josiah Lockhart, general manager of the Grassmarket Community Project, said: "We have been planning this for four or five years but we're now at that place where we've got funding and we can start to plan the building phase at the end this year or early 2012.

"The Grassmarket Community Project, a partnership between the Grassmarket Mission and Greyfriars Kirk, is about supporting people through transitions in their lives and about re-connecting disengaged people.

"Though founded on work with those traditionally labelled 'homeless', this project has been extended to adults who are facing 'deep social exclusion' and have been marginalised by lack of opportunity, skills and aspiration."

The project's managers say the new building will also become one of the most sustainable in the Old Town.

Mr Lockhart added: "We'll be using local building materials as much as possible and there will also be a sedum roof, ground source heating and hopefully a brown-water waste system. In terms of self-sufficiency, we don't have any government tenders at the moment so the new community hall will help us move towards that."

Council planners are currently examining the proposals, although having successfully gone through a community consultation process, the organisers are confident that they will get the project off the ground.

A community information meeting with the architect, project managers and the minister from Greyfriars will be held at the nearby Greyfriars Kirk on February 1 at 2pm.