Our Ethos
Improving mental health in the Scottish Borders through caring, creativity and collaboration
At Birkhill House CIC has created a unique environment, a centre for creativity and well-being based in a sympathetically renovated Georgian stable block in the beautiful Scottish Borders countryside. Our interconnected workshops and outdoor areas provide inspirational spaces and room to breathe.
At Birkhill House CIC has a holistic ethos incorporating the gardens, grounds, animals and people. Everything has a use and a purpose, from the composting that allows us to grow our own fruits, vegetables and animal feed, to the recycling and upcycling in our crafting activities. Our animals provide companionship and comfort, and their fleece and wool is used for yarn, weaving, creative projects and to support a yearly fleece residency for textile students.
2023 facts and figures
With a social mission based around helping to improve mental health and wellbeing in the Scottish Borders, it is important that we take account of what is provided here on a regular basis. Accordingly, we spend a lot of time crunching numbers - for our own internal accounting, as well as for funding applications to be able to continue to make the offering here as accessible and relevant as we can for our community.
When we tot up numbers, it is always impressive to see just how far our efforts go toward providing all kinds of craft-, animal- and horticulturally-based opportunities for so many people around us.
Also, for all that we offer, it's always good to take stock and ask questions about what more we could be doing. Or what we could perhaps be doing differently.
To that end, please reach out if you have questions or suggestions.
Funding Support
Through innovative design and partnership working, we strive to also generate revenue from the sale of products and provision of workshops in order to be able to ensure that the offering here is as accessible as possible for our community.
As a not-for-profit social enterprise, we have benefitted from generous funding support to enable projects like the establishment of our natural dye garden, development of our fleece and fibre education programme and the delivery of a number of community projects. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our funders for their support and acknowledge them here:
