Hosted by Kate Darrah
The visit to the Ridge at Dunbar on Tuesday 20th August 2024 was very well attended by about 18 members.
We were hosted by Managing Director Kate Darrah and her deputy Katie Wood. the group assembled in the Ridge office in Dunbar High Street, where Kate Darrah gave a very interesting talk on the history and development of the Ridge SCIO.
The project was started by Kate about 13 years ago and has since gone from strength to strength. It aims to provide training and support to help people find gainful employment locally, to maintain and restore historic buildings in the High Street backlands and to protect our local environmental heritage by creating a training garden within the historic Backlands site. The Ridge now provides apprenticeship training in building trades, carpentry and stonemasonry, with particular emphasis on the sympathetic restoration of historic buildings. It also provides work experience in gardening and building trades for groups of 16 year old schoolchildren from across the county with about 34 children currently taking part.
Our group was taken on a tour of the various backland sites and were privileged to see the new training building which is now nearing completion and which includes a fully equipped kitchen to support trainees and to provide training in cookery.
The success of the Ridge is largely due to the vision and dedication of Kate Darrah in gaining the necessary permissions, in fundraising the large sums required and in assembling and motivating a team of skilled professionals. We very much appreciate the time taken by Kate and her team to show us around this very interesting and ambitious project.
