Sylva Foundation

Sylva is now on Bluesky! We abandoned the other place long ago and have been waiting to jump aboard the next good platform. Join us there! Looking forward to sharing news, views and activities as we continue our work nurturing a wood culture, growing a future. #forestry #wood #environment #bsky https://lnkd.in/eDxA3Bi6

We won! We are delighted to announce that our Ebworth Stools collection, designed and manufactured in collaboration with the National Trust, has won the Furniture Production category at this years Wood Awards. The elegant, limited-edition Ebworth stools have been created using trees felled on the Ebworth Estate due to ash dieback – a disease which could kill up to 80% of ash trees across the UK, according to The Woodland Trust. The collection entails three different designs – each inspired by a stool in the National Trust’s collection – and has been produced in small batches by students at Sylva Foundation’s wood school. “From their elegant design and sustainable nature, through to the story which these wooden furniture items tell – charting their journey from woodland to workshop and on to the end user – the Ebworth Stools embody the principles of the Wood Awards” Sebastian Cox, lead judge of Furniture and Objects. By creating beautiful, high-quality products from certified Grown in Britain, the Sylva Foundation and National Trust are bridging the gap between education and practice – while illustrating the importance of active forest management. The Wood School team share this award with three cohorts of Professional Course students who have year on year produced such fantastic quality work, and we thank our client and collaborator, the National Trust, for having faith in our unique furniture making course. Joseph Bray (Head of Wood School) collected the award on behalf of the Sylva Foundation, accompanied by Senior Tutor Phil Gullam. Read more on our blog: https://lnkd.in/eFvyY5H3

We are delighted to announce our Carving Change: Woodworking and Marginalised Genders Seminar. All the details are below. Come join us for Carving Change, where together, we’re shaping an inclusive future for woodworking!

The myForest team were delighted to speak in the ConFor tent at #APF2024. The exhibition is the UK’s largest forestry, woodland, arboriculture, firewood, fencing, trees and timber trade show. It attracts over 320 exhibitors and 23000 visitors. The talk was titled ‘Linking the wood-chain through collaboration and technology’. Paul Orsi (Director of Operations at Sylva Foundation) spoke alongside Rossanna Cunningham from the Northwoods Woodland Management Innovation Programme and Hester Robertston from CloudForest. Together Paul, Rosanna and Hester talked about how their work separately on innovation was supporting more woodlands into management, but more importantly how their collaboration across technology was bigger than the sum of the parts. Paul highlighted the work that the myForest team had done over the last year to support woodland owners and managers to collect and calculate woodland inventory information in myForest. He also highlighted some of the development work that is ongoing at the moment including trialling a direct link from myForest to create a sale listing in the CloudForest marketplace to allow owners and managers to market their timber more easily and effectively. Watch this space over the coming months and release new functionality in myForest based on some fantastic collaboration. #woodlandmanagement #innovation #collaboration Confor: Confederation of Forest Industries (UK)

We're pleased that a paper featuring the outcomes of the 2021 British Woodlands Survey exploring attitudes to oak tree health has been published in an academic journal. See: https://lnkd.in/e7msbBm2 Co-authored by our team with researchers from Forest Research and Bangor University. Huge thanks to all those who supported the survey, either by promoting it among land managers or completing it. Abstract The values of forests have been extensively researched by focusing on general public perspectives with different frameworks used to categorise them. Studies have also explored forest manager values; however, there is limited evidence on the values they associate with specific tree species. Understanding more about managers’ values regarding a particular species is important when considering how they make decisions and might respond to tree pests and disease threats. In this study, we explored forest managers’ values regarding oak trees and the effects of a particular pest and disease risk known as Acute Oak Decline on these. This paper outlines the results from interviews with forest managers in England and a survey of private forest managers in Britain to capture the ways in which they value the oak trees they own, manage, or influence. Forest manager types included private owners of single or multiple properties, forestry professionals, businesses, and tenants. The results show that oaks were highly valued by forest managers as an iconic cultural species in the landscape and for their timber. Veteran and ancient oak trees were considered very important, and managers were more likely to spend time and resources attempting to conserve these oaks due to their perceived cultural value. Those who had trees that were suffering from Acute Oak Decline were also more likely to spend resources on them to save the trees or try to reduce the impact of the disease. Gaining a better understanding of forest managers’ attitudes towards protecting species they value is important as it has implications for their decision-making and management behaviours. It can also help to provide relevant bodies with information on how best to develop and communicate guidance and advice on monitoring and reporting disease symptoms, as well as managing oak tree health. #research #land #trees #resilience #culture #forestry

We are delighted to welcome Cathrin (Cat) Poppensieker to the Sylva team. Cat will lead our new Woodworking and Gender Project, funded by The National Heritage Lottery Fund and other generous supporters. The project aims to address the significant gender imbalance in the heritage woodworking sector. The project envisions a transformed woodworking industry, driven by the creativity and innovation of women and non-binary individuals, revitalising endangered crafts while promoting sustainable practices. With a Bachelor of Fine Arts (2014) and more than 12 years of project management experience across corporate, academic, and charity sectors, Cat specialises in delivering impactful projects for under-represented groups. Her work is devoted to social justice, community cohesion, and enhancing wellbeing. Cat has a passion for furniture making and woodworking. She has developed a wide range of hands-on skills, while working as a workshop technician at a furniture school, where she supported students in honing their craftsmanship. As a hardwood specialist and machinist, she gained in-depth knowledge of timber properties and machining techniques. Additionally, her experience as a freelance carpenter has allowed her to navigate and overcome the unique challenges of being a woman in a traditionally male-dominated trade. Speaking about her appointment, Cat commented: “Leading the ‘Woodworking and Gender’ project at Sylva is a dream come true! I’m really excited to collaborate with incredible female and non-binary makers, alongside educators and the furniture industry, to make woodworking/heritage craft more inclusive, innovative, and inspiring for future generations.” See more on the project here: https://lnkd.in/en4pWqPg #NationalLotteryHeritageFund Acknowledgement statement The Woodworking and Gender project is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Conran Foundation, The Mila Charitable Trust, Benchmark Furniture Ltd, Vastern Timber Ltd. Thanks to their generous support and National Lottery players, together we will ensure future generations of skilled and resilient women and non-binary woodworkers are able to support the woodworking heritage of this country for years to come.

Wood School stools shortlisted for prestigious Wood Awards We are very proud and excited that the Ebworth stools have been shortlisted for the Production Made Furniture category of this year's Wood Awards. Praise must go to the makers from our Professional Furniture Making course, who have skillfully made the Ebworth stools in batches over the past three years. Made from home-grown ash, this collection of hand-crafted stools connects education, heritage and sustainable woodland management. Resulting from a collaboration between Sylva Foundation and The National Trust, these elegant limited-edition stools have been created using trees felled on the Ebworth Estate due to ash dieback disease. The collection entails three different designs (each inspired by a stool in The National Trust’s collection) and has been produced in small batches by students at Sylva Foundation’s Wood School and sold via The National Trust's online shop. Supporting the educational aims of the school, each of the stools incorporates a specific set of making processes and techniques but are unified with a common design language. Creating beautiful, high-quality products from certified Grown in Britain ash, this project helps bridge the gap between education and practice while illustrating the importance of active forest management. Read more on the Wood Awards website: https://lnkd.in/eUupCxHk

Early Warning System Development Working Group Sylva Foundation is working on a new Defra-funded project, in collaboration with Forest Research and the Plant Health Forestry team of the Forestry Commission to explore the potential to development of an Early Warning System which could be built within the myForest platform. There is potential for such a system to help government officials to reach out to landowners with specific tree species when threatened by a particular pest/pathogen, in a defined location, with a view to managing pest/pathogen outbreaks. We want to explore the potential of such a system from all angles; legal, ethical and practical. Can you help us by joining a small working group? Ideally you will be a woodland owner or manager, and also have some knowledge of our myForest service. Please consider supporting this important work. Find out more and apply here: https://lnkd.in/eSpwDGju

We are really delighted to welcome Phoebe Oldfield to our trustee board. Phoebe is a furniture designer-maker, currently working at BENCHMARK FURNITURE LIMITED. Following her degree at Nottingham Trent University, Phoebe was awarded the Chartered Society of Designers CEP Prize, along with the Materials and Design Exchange award for Sustainability. Phoebe has been involved with Sylva Foundation via several projects, and in the past completed our Professional Course in furniture making. In particular, Phoebe has played an instrumental role in supporting the Sylva team in its successful bid to the National Heritage Lottery for the Woodworking and Gender Project which we announced recently (https://lnkd.in/ecSspAf5). She is passionate about promoting sustainable woodland management through the use of home-grown timber, and was appointed as the inaugural Grown in Britain Scholar. Her love for the natural environment is often communicated through her designs and photography. Phoebe’s vision for the future of design and manufacturing is to foster a nature-centric approach, urging designers, makers, and clients to reconnect with the natural environment. Speaking of her election to the board, Phoebe commented: "I am absolutely thrilled to have been elected to the board. I hope to bring a fresh perspective to the charity’s work engaging with wood business, and in particular, be able to champion the exciting Gender and Woodworking Project." 

A call to action to the forestry sector... register your interest in the development of a data standard for forestry. The sector is increasingly embedded in the digital forest, but the lack of a data standard for forestry can make it difficult to link technologies. Sylva Foundation and Evolving Forests are asking anyone interested, any businesses or stakeholders, to register your interest. We will collate private and public interest and use this to think about how and who might undertake and fund this work. We believe the production on an overarching data standard for forestry is vital for the future development of the sector. See our blog to read the short paper on the issues and needs, and to register your interest. This needs to be a forestry-wide collective endeavour if it is to work.