Ruskin College

Just to get out for a few hours yesterday we went to Nailsworth, intending to have a mooch around a shop called Domestic Science, which happens to have a rather nice cafe attached to it called The Canteen. 

We found the place transformed - Domestic Science, as the name would imply, used to be filled with really useful stuff that was kitchen oriented, with a smattering of crappy gifts; The Canteen was a hippyish cafe serving good food at reasonable prices. Domestic Science now specialises is the most useless stuff you could imagine and seems to have hired the Village Idiot for its buyer; The Canteen has priced itself into a rigid middle class market - £8.50 for an egg on toast!

Instead we went to the Ruskin Mill Cafe, which is more what The Canteen used to be before it decided its market was more upscale. £7 for a huge plate of chorizo, potato and pasta cheese salad, which was more than enough for both of us, made by the students themselves.

Ruskin Mill College, for which the cafe doubles as a refectory during the working week, specialises in helping students learn to care for their own well-being and development and overcome their barriers to learning, using arts, crafts, commerce, agriculture, nutrition, living skills and the environment. A brilliant concept for those having, for one reason or another, problems with mainstream education.

These are some of the water features the students produce in the craft centre, and I think they're fantastic.