The Church of Scotland’s charity CrossReach announced a major community baking campaign to raise awareness of mental health issues across Scotland today in Princes Street Gardens.
HRH Princess Royal came to Princes Street Gardens at the Heart and Soul Festival where she presented the winner with a prize and also invited communities across the country to hold cake sales with a difference. The Princess Royal is attending the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland as Lord High Commissioner to represent Her Majesty the Queen.
Her Royal Highness and the Moderator between them cut a large Grey Cake made specially for the Heart and Soul festival. Before the cake was cut, the audience enjoyed a ‘Bake Off’ style video where Rev Dr Derek Browning recently challenged the Church’s Youth Moderator to a competition in baking the first CrossReach Grey Cake. The Youth Moderator’s cake was judged the best!
The Princess Royal had entered the gardens on The Mound and walked through the Festival where various groups have set up shop in tents. The crowds of people who were at the festival were surprised by her appearance there this afternoon, including one lady who was so excited and told Her Royal Highness that she was “so very beautiful”. She stopped to speak with many representatives of the church groups and people along the way.
You are asked to bake Grey Cakes which are grey coloured on the outside but reveal a colourful inside when cut. One in four Scots will experience mental health issues and the Grey Cakes reflect what it must be like to live under the fog of depression or anxiety.
CrossReach’s new Chief Executive, Viv Dickenson, said: “Mental health services are significantly underfunded, but can make such a big difference so quickly to people. Our Grey Cake campaign is doing what the church does best, and that is getting alongside people and baking! We are combining our core skills, and I really hope communities across Scotland will get behind this.”
The Rt Rev Dr Derek Browning, the newly installed Moderator of the Church of Scotland, will support the initiative throughout his year in office. The minister of Morningside Church, Dr Browning said : “It says to me how, very often, with people all we see on the outside is the grey colour. We very rarely get to see when people have poor mental health what’s going on underneath the surface.”
The Grey Cake initiative is inspired and endorsed by Emma Thomas of The Depressed Cake Shop. CrossReach, which is one of Scotland’s largest social care providers with services across the country, believes the cake sales will help raise awareness of mental health issues and raise funds for a variety of charitable services which support them.
Information packs on how communities can take part will be available on the CrossReach website, www.crossreach.co.uk, from Monday 22 May 2017.
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