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The Roxy Art House’s “Death Weekend” was advertised as a “celebration of death on Halloween weekend” – with parties featuring zombie and “dead celeb” dress codes – but when Saturday arrived, one organiser could only admit that “we were too prescient.” For the Roxy was itself no more, and with zombies sent packing into the night, this nineteenth-century church would once more stand on Halloween as a derelict Gothic ruin. The Reaper is also waiting to be served his frosty Soya-milk cappuccino at the Forest café on Bristo Place.

Strangely enough, the majority of Edinburgh’s students regard the Forest café as the hub of the city’s art scene and – in equal measure – as a preposterous joke. Tychy is perpetually exasperated by the Forest – in the past I have warned about the dangers of catching fleas whilst dining there. The words “Forest Café” evoke images of glassy-eyed students with stinking dreadlocks – of demented-looking characters who are dressed pointedly in military costume – of the famously rotten toilets – of the hopeless artwork and embarrassing politics, all flavoured with an alarmingly right-wing, lifestyle-obsessed individualism. The Forest is rather like the wigwams that small children make by throwing blankets over clothes horses – a magical world of childlike irresponsibility, which after five minutes trapped inside with the rampaging, shrieking toddlers leaves you feeling irredeemably adult and seriously annoyed.

But I am too big a man to take pleasure in the misfortunes of the Forest café. Both the Roxy and the Forest were owned by the charitable monopoly Edinburgh University Settlement (EUS), which last week went into administration with reported debts of over four million pounds. The Roxy was abruptly shut down and the Forest is now on the market. EUS (which is independent from Edinburgh University) was founded in 1905, and over the last century it has championed adult education, art therapy, and services for the mentally disabled, but in retrospect this monopoly seems to have been too big, too ambitious, and too unaccountable. The trigger for bankruptcy appears to have been the pressure to pay the wages of forty EUS staff by the end of October – an obligation which the charity could not meet – and the EUS executive, their trustees, and their accountants will have to explain why the charity was liquidated at such short notice, leaving educators and carers, those organising events and concerts, and some seriously vulnerable clients to be all unceremoniously dumped without any opportunity to organise alternative provision.

The Roxy was probably the iceberg which sank the EUS, and an obvious question is why the charity had purchased this swanky property in 2009 when its own future may have already seemed precarious. Amongst the EUS collection, the Roxy must have acquired the eminence of a spare wheel – it was empty most evenings and it lacked a vision and an atmosphere which were significantly different from those of the Forest – and one may wonder why it was not sold off to secure confidence in the rest of the EUS and safeguard its remaining portfolio. In truth, the building is probably unsellable – it is too out-of-the-way and hampered by its residential neighbours to become a successful nightclub, but too unwieldy to be converted into flats, especially in the present market.

A broader question about the EUS is why “lifeline” services which vulnerable people depended upon – such as adult literacy and mental health provision – were tied up with the fortunes of arts venues. Presumably the social care services were the riskier part of the portfolio, because they required paid staff, and perhaps the EUS business model involved subsidising the social care with revenue earned from elsewhere. But the EUS does appear undisciplined and accident-prone: in 2006, the EUS finally sued Cowgate Central after it had accrued two years worth of outstanding rent; whilst its GRV nightclub is presently embroiled in a bizarre legal action after its management allegedly “stole” 20,000 units of electricity from Scottish Power. The EUS has been run for the last 23 years by Nick Flavin – a former African missionary – and the charity has been recently exposed as taking financial advice from the convicted fraudster David Duff.

Projects such as “Stepping Stones” – which provide educational and social activities for those with serious mental disabilities – should be amongst the last things that the city relinquishes during the recession, and the Tory councillor Cameron Rose has claimed that the council is “making arrangements to identify and make appropriate arrangements for provision to vulnerable people.” And we should always remember that there is more to an “arts scene” than property portfolios and financial jiggery-pokery. Reports of the death of the Forest Café have been greatly exaggerated – if this institution is really, as it styles itself, a “volunteer run, not-for-profit, DIY, arts action events social chaos space!” then it should be truly recession-proof. Whilst it is unlikely that the Forest will raise the £600,000 needed to purchase the old Bristo Church where it presently resides, they should be easily able to relocate elsewhere.

Edinburgh’s artistic establishment seems to have run seriously out of control, with both the EUS and the Edinburgh College of Art potentially imperilling countless projects as a result of sheer financial mismanagement. Let us hope that crashing into the market economy will discipline wandering minds and even lead to some better art. Tychy may have more on these stories in the coming weeks…

[You can donate to "Buy/Save the Forest" here. Ed.]