Join us for Doors Open Day 2024 as we invite you to explore our historic building, Castle Mills.
We will be hosting guided Building Tours throughout the weekend (including a British Sign Language tour on Sunday), visiting the Printmaking Studio and Archive while learning about the rich history of Fountainbridge area and of the history of our heritage building when it was Silk Mill, the headquarters of the North British Rubber Company, and later the Scottish & Newcastle Ltd Breweries.
Building tours are free, but we encourage you to book in advance via the link above to secure your place.
Our Archive will be open throughout the day, where you can talk with Collections Development Manager Kristina Royer about our Permanent Collection. No booking required.
An interactive display will show a map of the Fountainbridge area where our building is located. Visitors will be able to consider which smells they connect to this area, both today and in previous years when it was known for its brewing industry or rubber production. Using colour coded stickers, visitors can place a sticker representing a specific smell on the areas they connect that with. This interactive display aims to map the heritage of industrial smell of this part of Edinburgh, and which specific smells people have been connecting or relating to throughout the years.
For the young ones, we will have a Children’s Activity Zine available in the building with pens and coloured pencils. The zine is created considering the Union Canal as a network channel between different cities and towns on the central belt of Scotland, as well as contemporary communities who live and work along it. The Union Canal also represents a connecting route between past and present as well as an exchange of resources and inspirations for many people throughout history, and is also a link with our natural environment. Children are encouraged to explore these aspects in the Children's Activity Zine, with games, creative prompts and fun facts for children to explore in and around the heritage building of Castle Mills in the guise of a treasure hunt.
