Forest Cafe

The Forest, also referred to as Forest Café, is an independent social centre and arts centre, located on Lauriston Place, central Edinburgh, Scotland. It is notable for being run by volunteers as a charitable self-sustaining not-for-profit. Forest cafe was previously housed in the former Edinburgh Seventh Day Adventist Church, a building owned by the Edinburgh University Settlement until August 2011, and housed the café, an arts gallery, performance space, rehearsal/music studio, and darkroom. In August 2012 the Forest reopened in Lauriston Place, Tollcross, where it continues its activity as a volunteer run vegetarian cafe with regular free events and workshops, assuming a pivotal role in the revival of the independent community development in central Edinburgh.

The Forest organisation itself started in August 2000 with a venue in West Port, off the Grassmarket in Edinburgh's Old Town. Relocation to the Bristo Place premises started in September 2003 and the Forest Café opened there in October 2003. After leaving in August 2011, the Forest Café reopened again in Tollcross in August 2012.

The building at 3 Bristo Place was constructed during 1899–1900 to a design by Sydney Mitchell and Wilson for the Evangelical Union on the site of a former Baptist Chapel. The category-B listed building has 659 square metres (7,090 sq ft) of floor space and was previously owned by the National Museums of Scotland, who sold the building for £600,000 during 2003. The plaque over the door reflects its subsequent use as a Seventh-day Adventist Church, who had purchased the building in 1942 and used it until 2000.

Free events were held regularly, including workshops, music, film, poetry, theatre and readings. During each summer the venue ran the 'August Forest Fringe', a theatre and alternative arts programme as an alternative complement to the mainstream Edinburgh Festival.

In 2004, the Forest Café became one of only four internet cafés in the United Kingdom to have won a highly recommended citation in the Yahoo! Mail Internet Café Awards.

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