Community: Colinton Village Enterprises

Lockdown Community Spirit

Colinton Village Enterprise (CVE) SCIO would normally be busy preparing for Art in the Park now, Colinton’s biennial September festival. But with this unable to go ahead, and since Tea in the Park in May was cancelled too, the group’s formidable energy has been redirected to other initiatives.

I spoke with Lorraine O’Shea, Chair of CVE, to see what they’ve been up to since lockdown started. “We’ve been supporting other grassroots organisations in the community, and discovered a whole lot of community spirit. The pandemic has really bought people together to help each other and our neighbours.”

CVE’s lockdown activities started with the idea of selling secondhand books from the large stock they had. “We normally sell them at the events. It’s always a good fundraiser, so we decided to bundle them into sets of 5 and sell for £2 per bundle via the CVE Facebook page.” They’ve been doing this throughout lockdown, providing people with a steady stream of books to read, or to give to their neighbours who are shielding, and so on. Fellow CVE committee member Jennie Loudon makes up the bundles and arranges non-contact pick up.

“The money goes in an envelope through the door, so there is no physical contact. People have been phenomenal, many putting in more than the £2. We’ve raised money - all of which will be donated to food charities, and got through most of our stock!”

Colinton’s books have also been appreciated by other local charities who have included books for their users with food or clothing parcels. For example, the Eric Liddel Centre requested certain titles for their dementia sufferers, so Jenny has been doing custom bundles for them! LOVEGorgie Farm, Wester Hailes Youth Agency, Streetreads, Space & Broomhouse Hub, to name just a few, are other grassroots organisations who have been delighted to receive books.

Then there was the soap. Lorraine became aware of an availability of soap from Glasgow the Caring City, through a connection with a resilience group here - Edinburgh Coronavirus Support. Via CVE, she took delivery of 2000 bars and got to work contacting her network of charities to see who would benefit from them. Unsurprisingly, they were in very high demand, going out with food and clothing bundles via local grassroots organisations to keep vulnerable people supplied during lockdown.

It wouldn’t have been possible without the storage facility at ‘The Shed’ in Spylaw Park. The building, which facilitates Art in the Park too, has recently received the green light to be sold to CVE from Edinburgh City Council via their successful Community Asset Transfer application. The project to turn it into a Community Heritage Hub, in line with the character and the heritage of the building, is currently being concepted by an architect. It will be publicly available for groups to use, exhibitions and other community activities.

This article was written by Helen-Jane Shearer after speaking with Lorraine O’Shea, Chair of the Colinton Village Enterprises. CVE’s supports the development of the Colinton community’s rich heritage by promoting social, artistic, recreational and commercial engagement. Helen-Jane is the Editor of the Dell Directory