The Woodville Woods is a unique off-grid ‘Greenwood Carving’ facility, established through 2024 to keep alive the ancient craft of greenwood carving in Scotland and offer some much needed hands-on activity to the local area of Govan, Glasgow.
The intention is to develop an organically evolving programme of affordable craft workshops and free community gatherings that can expand the skills of local community, artists and makers, and connect people through outdoor communal creative activity.
The project is taking place on a plot of derelict industrial land on Woodville Street. Left to its own devices since the 1980s, the land is overgrown with naturally regenerated native trees, shrubs and plants.
These inspiring ‘pioneer species’ include Birch, Willow, Sycamore, Hawthorn, Buddleia, Broom, Hawkweed and many more. We ask all humans to tread lightly on this rare wild territory within the confines of the city, and take our lead from the pioneers.
The Territory
Woodville Woods is kindly supported by SPT Subway who own the land and have allowed the pioneers to get to work over the past couple of decades, creating a special oasis of biodiversity within a heavily industrialised area of Glasgow city.
We currently don’t receive funding for this endeavour as the system deems it unsuitable for this type of support. As such we run on the kindness of volunteers, grit, determination and belief in what the site can teach us. We welcome any offers of help and encourage anyone who attends our workshops to donate what you can to help us protect the site and its multi-dimensional inhabitants.
The World Tree Carving Club
The Woodville Woods will be the new home and natural evolution of our World Tree Carving Club, born of a creative response to the currently unfolding ecological disaster that is the Ash Dieback epidemic.
In reverence and symbiosis with the non-human entities already at work on this small pocket of ruined territory, we strive to create a tangible example of how to collectively engage with the rapid changes that are happening in our environment in a creative and sensitive way that actively connects us to our wider bio-region, the local land on which we live and depend, and one another.
