This week marks one year since we opened at St Oswald’s Community Hub. On October 24th 2025 we first opened the doors to the people of Bruntsfield and beyond. It’s been a year full of activity, featuring over 300 events including a full fringe run and the inaugural edition of our very own Make It Yourself festival last week. We’ve hosted everything from a sublimely gorgeous handfasting ceremony to a marvellously quirky pub quiz. We’ve built a workshop space, a tea station and a shop space like no other.
Now we are so well embedded in our community hub of Bruntsfield it’s quite incredible to recall that nothing about this was inevitable back in those first weeks of last Autumn. At that time the Pianodrome was very much feeling out a new space to see if it would work for the community, for the owners of the building and for us, as well as operating under a temporary Raised Structure licence which limited our activity to three months maximum, after which we would need to cease all activity and leave.
We are no strangers to this situation. Since it’s inception, the Pianodrome amphitheatre has had to bounce from place to place, restricted by the terms of a Raised Structure licence. Since I started volunteering with Pianodrome in 2018 I’ve helped relocate our twelve tonne amphitheatre from the Granton warehouse HQ to seven different locations around Edinburgh and Leeds (and back again!) and all this time we’ve been looking for a place to be permanently. Moving to St Oswald’s had the potential to be the stable base we needed but to have the chance to settle down here we needed to work towards getting a permanent licence to operate- a Building Warrant. And for that we needed money.
We’d hardly moved in before we launched a Crowdfunder in November and thanks to the generosity of our community we were able to raise £36033. This amount was earmarked to heat and light the space and most crucially of all to shoot for a Building Warrant.
We hoped a Building Warrant would be achievable but it certainly wasn’t a given: the building industry regulators love new materials which can be tested and proven to have a certain capacity and strength, how do you prove century old materials are still up to the job? There seemed to be no precedent for a structure made out of recycled materials to be given one. Fortunately our working group of Emily Matt and Tim partnered with building experts who share our reduce, reuse, recycle ethos. Architects Jo and Aythan at EALA and Structural Engineer Tim Heatherington at AED drilled into the details and found a path through for us. One main sticking point was making a structure made of wood sufficiently fire proof. Mel and Emily led a team of willing painters to coat the backs of the structure with four layers of fire retardant varnish. Another stipulation led to innovation as Tim created decorative newel posts from grand piano legs to meet requirements on staircases. Many other adjustments both large and small added up to over 200 hours of work and made our good old amphitheatre compliant with modern standards.
The whole process took six months and cost over £12500, including £4058.50 for our engineer's structural certification, £3302 in architects fees and the application alone cost £660. We chipped away at it from February and finally received our approval letter on August 5th. In the hurly burly of the Fringe we hardly had a moment to celebrate. It’s been a joy to write this blog, to look back on the distance travelled, realise how far we’ve come and to express our gratitude to everyone who has been with us on the journey.
A special mention to everyone who supported the crowdfunder; we are so grateful to everyone who contributed to our campaign. We have felt the responsibility to make sure every penny is well spent and the need to have results to show you. With something intangible like a building warrant you have to imagine the difference you have made. Well, you could imagine an empty room where the Pianodrome is now and that you have helped fill this room with creative community. By funding the building warrant you have created the conditions that ensures the Pianodrome can stay in one place for years to come and from this base music, creativity and community can flourish.
Now it’s October again, one year on from our first opening the doors. On the one year anniversary there’ll be free show at lunchtime; “The Funky Side of Grant Green Organ Trio” will be tearing up the Pianodrome with their irresistible grooves. Exactly a year ago Will Pickvance was the very first show at St Oswald’s, his joyous performance began with the whole audience deciding on the first chord to be played in the Pianodrome. Since that first chord the music has continued and now resonates into another year: In the entrance corridor I’m struck by a poster for Will’s “Rag and Bone Christmas” show which was a sell out hit last year. We’ve never been in a place long enough before to have a show reappear a year later, it’s a wonderful novelty to have secure tenancy where things can return a year later and we are still here.
Seeing a poster for a Christmas show is also an urgent reminder that winter is coming and with £23000 still to use from our crowdfunder we are moving at speed to find a solution for heating our space. More on this soon in Crowdfunder update part two!
