It has been a VERY eventful 6 months at Garvald Edinburgh, with some very exciting changes and developments for the organisation since our last update.
Our newest workshop has opened at our Mayfield site. It’s been wonderful to welcome additional members to Garvald with our new Art and Print studio. They have been enjoying making lots of colourful and creative new work such as this gelliprint house, ink and stick bird and this exquisite linocut tiger. The Art and Print team are all excited about what the future will bring!
At the end of October, our new shop at the bottom of Morningside opened, rebranded as “Garvald Makers”. This has been a much-anticipated move, providing a larger, and much more accessible space to showcase the wonderful work our members create. We are really looking forward to sharing more of what we do with those that visit our shop.
In December we celebrated Christmas with a “Festive Open Day” at our Orwell Arts workshop. With the opening of our new shop, our open events have shifted to smaller, building-based events with more of a community focus than selling. But it also means more opportunities throughout the year to share what we do with our visitors. And still many opportunities to enjoy delicious Garvald home baking!!! A big thanks again to Vegware who supplied all the tableware we needed for this event.
The end of 2023 also marked a change in the leadership at Garvald Edinburgh. Our long standing CEO Mike Casey retired at Christmas, having worked at Garvald for over 25 years! Mike enjoyed multiple send-offs across all our buildings (and, of course, lots of cake) as staff and members alike wished him well on his next adventure.
At the same time, we welcomed our new CEO – Colum Pooler, who joined us in the autumn, and spent his first few weeks working in all our workshops, getting to know members and staff, and experiencing first hand what we do. It will be exciting to see what is next for Garvald Edinburgh with Colum at the helm!
Finally, as always Garvald was able to contribute work to a number of exhibitions from some of our very talented members, including the ‘Humanity, Outside In’ national exhibition, Marchmont Makers Open Studios, the St Martin’s Community Resource Centre Art Exhibition and Edinburgh Art Fair.
