We caught up with Joe Bray, Head of the Wood School at Sylva Foundation, to find out more about the charity,
the vision behind it and the importance of helping trees and people grow together.
Let’s get us started: who are you?
I’m Joe Bray. My background before working for the Sylva foundation was teaching at Rycotewood Furniture Centre in Oxford and completing a Churchill Fellowship looking at furniture craft programmes in Europe and North America.
For 2 years now, I’ve been head of Wood School. I’ve got this amazing role where I’ve been allowed to develop a wood school from scratch. It’s an incredible opportunity – I keep pinching myself.
Tell me about the Sylva Foundation?
The Sylva Foundation is an environmental charity, which was created 11 years ago. The main thrust of our work is in forestry, encouraging people to better manage woodlands, to think about issues such as tree resilience, and most recently supporting woodland creation projects. We also support forest school education and scientific studies.
We are based on a farm in Long Wittenham, South Oxfordshire. In what was originally a potato store, we’ve got 15 microbusinesses. They’re all wood users, from boat builders – including Colin Henwood who’s been making boats on the Thames for over 40 years – to furniture makers. We also have Mary, an upholsterer who teaches, and some are graduates from Rycotewood who are offered a free workshop space for a year. We really want to make sure we provide the spaces at a relatively low cost because we aim to support people starting their creative and craft businesses.
The recently converted grain store is home to the Wood School where we run everything from half-day courses for children to professional programmes.
What role does the Sylva Foundation play in the community?
For woodworkers of all kinds we provide expensive machinery and the space needed for starting up in business at a very low cost. We used to call it hot benching as we thought that people would come, rent a space, use it for a week or a month and then go again. But the reality is, it’s not very hot at all. People don’t want to leave!
I believe that when it was set up 6 years ago, they had an amazing vision. The vision was to establish a community of like-minded people connected with wood. It’s easy to write on paper that you want to create a community and how lovely it’s going to be, but much harder to make it a reality. Here at Sylva I really believe we have managed to make it work.
We run a wide range of education courses as well. We’re always open to visits from local schools, colleges and universities. We often take them on a walk in our Future Forest to show them the trees we’ve planted, to see timber converted into planks and then have a go at making something in our workshop. We’ve got this unique opportunity to talk about the whole wood-cycle from seed to object, from planting a tree to making a lovely piece of furniture.
We’re quite a small charity that punches above its weight. Sometimes it’s a little hard to describe, so we always encourage people to see it for themselves.
How has the support received from eScalate helped the Sylva Foundation?
eScalate funding helped us buy new woodworking machines for our workshop. When teaching, you’ve got to buy high quality industrial equipment, because it has to cope with heavy use while students are learning how they work. And they’ve got to be as safe as possible. Thanks to eScalate and another charity which match-funded our grant, we placed an order for circa £60,000 worth of machines in March.
The funding of our workshop equipment has allowed us to set up our 6 month pilot professional course, which is aimed at people who want to learn the practical skills necessary to find employment and potentially self-employment in the industry.
Without access to the grant we just wouldn’t be in the same position. Ultimately, we want to inspire and support people to experience professional workshop practice. We know there are many jobs out there and hope that joining our course will provide the skills to find and hold down a job.
What are the most rewarding moments you’ve had?
For me, the most fulfilling moment was standing back on the first morning of our professional course and finally realising how incredible an opportunity it had been to develop a course and workshop from scratch – not many people will have that privilege.
I believe that the best part of teaching is the time spent with students in a workshop. What I really like is that sequential learning that happens with time. Getting the course running has been the highlight of the last two years.
What is the community like?
The community here is amazing! Even in the two years I’ve been here I can really see people’s businesses starting to flourish. You can see the connections between people, whether that’s just helping each other out on a daily basis such as moving heavy objects or whether it’s collaborating on projects together.
Starting up in craft can be quite isolating, so to be able to come into a place where you can meet other creative and skilled people is just incredible. Pre-covid the shared spaces allowed informal conversations over a coffee – this is where the community comes together and supports one another. I think most people who come fall in love with being here.
How have and are you adapting to the pandemic?
Financially it was quite a hit to the Wood School – we had to cancel all the short courses we were running. The additional time was helpful to allow us to get prepared for the first professional course, although we’ve had to restrict it to five students.
As they depend upon access to our workshops for their work, the 15 micro businesses have continued working throughout the pandemic. We made the workshop areas covid-secure and responded to the needs of the community. In fact, it has been our most busy period in the shared workshop.
What are your plans for 2021?
For the professional course, our plan was to get the students to batch-produce a limited number of objects in partnership with a retailer, designer or a manufacturer. This would make the whole experience more realistic. Covid has definitely limited that for the moment, so we want to keep building relationships with other parties that are interested in the outcomes of our Wood School.
We also want to see if we can improve the support that we offer to the microbusinesses we host. We are thinking of introducing a professional development programme that would include mentoring, and access to a range of professionals in areas such as photography, marketing and financial planning to support them as their businesses grow.
It is also our aspiration to work with other charities in the local area to provide opportunities to join our courses through bursaries to give free or reduced price places to people from all backgrounds. We don’t just want to offer a fee paying elitist activity – we hope to provide access to woodworking skills to the whole community.
Our thanks to University of Oxford student, Matilda Gettins for collecting and writing this case study for OSEP.