Columcille offers creative activities in a community setting for adults with learning disabilities, autism and mental health needs. Activities include gardening, cooking, pottery, crafts, printing, drama, music, dancing, and joinery. Our approach values the uniqueness and gifts of each person and supports people to develop their creative skills and do meaningful work and activities in a friendly and warm social environment. Columcille is founded on the ideas of social therapy which originate in the thinking of Rudolf Steiner.
The café at Columcille is used by individuals who attend the centre and staff and is the social heart of the building providing morning and afternoon tea breaks, and a cooked lunch each day. The post holder will share responsibility for running the café at Columcille, supporting a small group of adults with learning disabilities to prepare lunch and tea breaks. The post holder will work closely with the other workshop co-leader who works Thursday and Friday, in planning and coordinating the smooth running of the café including record keeping, food and equipment ordering, stock control. Maintaining a high standard of food hygiene and cleaning routines is an important part of the role.
We are looking for someone with experience of supporting adults with learning disabilities, knowledge and experience of meal preparation and menu planning, and an interest in working for an organisation working from the ideas of social therapy and social pedagogy.
The official purposes of Earth in Common (EiC), a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SC044220), can be summarised as to encourage and support the people and organisations of Leith to grow food vegetables, and flowers for pollinating insects, in urban spaces, in order to improve health and wellbeing, community cohesion and the environment. However, EiC brings together a diverse group of enthusiastic staff, freelancers, volunteers and members/supporters who are tackling an array of social and environmental issues at local, national and international levels, and so it has broader activities and interests than suggested by its current official purposes.
The charity was appointed by the City of Edinburgh Council to manage, with and for the local community, two acres at the northwest corner of Leith Links Park. Now known as Leith Community Croft (LCC), our pioneering and model ‘urban croft’ offers cross-cutting solutions to social and environmental problems through a suite of integrated projects. It accommodates a community growing project with >100 participants. The growing project is distinct from allotments and benefits agrobiodiversity (see tinyurl.com/croftabdiv).
LCC is also the site of our tree nursery, market garden, composting facilities, our Hingabootery (shed-based café, with a serving hatch), our Market on the Croft (to be re-launched in 2023), and our lovely new building (largely funded by the Scottish Government’s Regeneration Capital Grant Fund), with a well-equipped kitchen, flexible meeting/training/dining spaces and office space. This building constitutes a multipurpose community hub at the core of LCC.
To learn more about EiC, candidates are advised to familiarise themselves with the organisation’s history and current projects and campaigns by visiting its website (earth-in-common.org). More information is also provided in the Job Description.
Summary of the job