Due to large scale building works at Abney Park Cemetery we are moving our workshop to Hackney City Farm.

From April 2021, London Green Wood is open again to coop members, community groups and courses. LGW works exclusively outside and aims to provide a covid safe workspace for those who feel comfortable to attend.

Our monthly volunteering sessions are on hold for the time being. There will also be no public access in the near future, although we still welcome visitors by prior arrangement. If you’d like to come in and see what we do please contact us in advance.

We do not require anyone to wear masks, as we are able to maintain social distancing, but feel free to wear one if it makes you feel safer.

All those visiting the workshop are required to sign in and leave a telephone no. for contact tracing purposes (for more information on how we will use this data, see our Privacy Policy).

What we ask of you before coming to the workshop:

• If you have symptoms of Covid-19 or have been exposed to someone who has tested postitive, stay home (how to request a test and what to do if you have symptoms).
• If you need to use public transport to access the workshop wear a face mask, as required by government guidance.

What we ask of you at the workshop:

• Wash your hands upon arrival. Please also wash hands before eating, as usual.
• Please bring your own resuable cup for tea and coffee breaks.
• Cleaning all tools after use and if passing to another person (anti viral wipes are provided). Wash hands before cleaning tools.
• Maintain a 2m distance between yourself and others.
• Bring your own PPE is needed (gloves for moving timber, fingerless gloves, masks and googles). Those wanting to use the linisher must bring their own PPE, this is not a excuse not to wear PPE where it is needed. This mainly applies to members rather than course participants.
• Anyone who has used the workshop who subsequently tests positive for Covid-19 is requested to inform London Green Wood.

We will:

• Provide an outdoor handwashing station (soap and water) within the workshop, alcohol gel and anti-viral wipes.
• Limit the max. no. of people in the workshop, to allow for social distancing.
• Send anyone home who becomes unwell at the workshop and advise them to follow the stay at home guidance.
• Remind everyone using the workshop of these measures.
• Designate a keyholder each day to take responsibility for Health and Safety, including coronavirus control measures.
• If advised that anyone who has been at the workshop has developed Covid-19, we will contact everyone who has been at the workshop at the same time as that person and advise them of test and trace guidance.

Our risk assessments are available for other organisations and people to use and edit for non-commercial purposes only (this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License).

• London Green Wood coronavirus risk assessment

The workshop is now closed due to the Tier 4 lockdown. Courses have been rescheduled and membership has been suspended until we can open again.

We are giving away wood for carving at home at the workshop gate every Friday lunchtime throughout lockdown. This is limited to 2 pieces of wood per person. The last person please recycle the box and the sign, or chuck it over the gate for use next week.

Throughout the first and second national lockdowns we have supplied free wood for those who are carving at home, to help keep us all safe and sane. This is a completely free offering, and a small team of volunteers makes this possible every week.

Some people in our network have asked to make a donation in return for this weekly wood supply, and so we have set up this donations page, enabling those who can and would like to, to do so. We are a non-profit organisation, any donations will go towards general upkeep of the workshop.

See our tips for staying safe carving at home and further links to tools and resources.

We’d love to see what you’re doing, please share your creations with us, Instagram @londongreenwood

We are currently taking bookings for courses March-June 2021, more information, and we are available for private course bookings and outdoor kids birthday parties once we are back to Tier 3 restrictions.

London Green Wood is a small, agile business and we work outdoors. These two factors meant that we have been able to adapt to living with this coronavirus and have no fears about the long term risk of the pandemic to our cooperative.

In mid-March, as we realised there was a looming lockdown, we cancelled all our courses with the aim of keeping the workshop open to coop members for as long as we could. A week later, lockdown was imposed on the UK and the workshop was shut, unable to open for over three months.

Once we’d finished cancelling all our courses and sessions, the first thing we did was to write some tips for carving at home. We knew there were a whole load of people taking up carving for the first time in lockdown and we wanted to help people be safe whilst using knives at home. We updated our resources page, with tool recommendations, advice on choosing wood and links to our favourite instructional videos. These were shared widely, as people across the UK took up new hobbies whilst they found themselves at home.

The second thing we did was to negotiate weekly access to the workshop for one volunteer each week. Every Monday one of the coop would saw and split up a box of wood to leave at the workshop gate for people to take home for free. The response was incredible, one week Dave arrived to a socially distanced queue of people waiting to collect spoon carving wood. Despite limiting the offering to three pieces of wood per person, a whole box of wood (sometimes two) disappeared in a couple of hours every week. We still give away bits and pieces of wood for people to carve at home, now it’s by pre-arrangement and we suggest giving a donation to the workshop in return.

After initially dismissing online courses as impossible, we came to realise it was necessary to help people keep creative and busy in lockdown, and to prepare LGW for potential future lockdowns. We created an online wand making class for families and spatula carving class for adults. We teamed up with The Woodsmith Experience to provide knives, and prepared dogwood and hazel sticks and lime spatula blanks at home. We posted wood and the customers bought their own knives. Demand was high, but the post was oh so slow. Still, with a lot of rescheduling, Jo taught basic knife skills online to about 80 people in a three month period with remarkably few injuries.

We started risk assessments for reopening the workshop as soon as lockdown restrictions started to lift. We were finally able to reopen to members only from 6^th July and begin teaching in-person courses on 28^th July. All our risk assessments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License and are available for other organisations and people to use and edit for non-commercial purposes.

We are currently developing a new partnership with another local organisation, Women after Greatness (WAG), a grassroots social enterprise on a mission to empower and equip young women and girls in East London to conquer negative cycles and build great opportunities. WAG has not been able to deliver their usual programmes because of coronavirus, but the need is greater than ever. We are seeking funding for a unique woodworking project for young women to learn heritage woodwork and bushcraft skills in inner London. Through learning these skills young women will be encouraged to spend more time outdoors, and enjoy the mental health and confidence benefits that are associated with being in a natural environment. Our outdoor workshop will also provide a safe space for young women to meet and for WAG to continue their mentoring support work.

Since the lockdown, interest in our cooperative as soared. We are running more courses than ever and have noticed an increase in people wanting to join the coop and be involved with all aspects of the workshop. Despite the isolation of recent months, we all know that we are stronger together and this is a key time to cooperate.

We have always enjoyed working outdoors but now our outdoor space is more valuable than ever. The workshop provides an opportunity to help other groups and individuals to get outside and be with others in a safe social space. We would like to share our space with others and through basic woodwork and bushcraft activities, help other community groups adapt their offering to outdoor living. We are willing to joint-fundraise to do this. We believe that being outdoors, in a natural environment and working with others (physically but not socially distanced) can give us all the resilience we need to survive this crisis.

From 4th July London Green Wood is open to coop members only. LGW aims to provide a covid safe workspace for members who feel comfortable to attend. Members are under no obligation to attend the workshop and those who are not yet able to, or do not want to, have the option of suspending their membership fee until they are ready to return.

Courses are due to restart from 28th July. Our monthly volunteering sessions are on hold for the time being. There will also be no public access in the near future, although we still welcome visitors by prior arrangement. If you’d like to come in and see what we do please contact us in advance.

We do not require anyone to wear masks, as we are able to maintain social distancing, but feel free to wear one if it makes you feel safer.

All those visiting the workshop are required to sign in and leave a telephone no. for track and trace purposes (for more information on how we will use this data, see our Privacy Policy).

What we ask of you before coming to the workshop:

• If you have symptoms of Covid-19 or have been exposed to someone who has tested postitive, stay home (how to request a test and what to do if you have symptoms).
• If you can please travel to the workshop on foot or by bike. Car parking is available (subject to water works outside the park).
• If you need to use public transport to access the workshop wear a face mask, as required by government guidance.

What we ask of you at the workshop:

• Wash your hands upon arrival. Please also wash hands before eating, as usual.
• Cleaning all tools after use and if passing to another person (anti viral wipes are provided). Wash hands before cleaning tools.
• Maintain a 2m distance between yourself and others.
• Bring your own PPE is needed (gloves for moving timber, fingerless gloves, masks and googles). Those wanting to use the linisher must bring their own PPE, this is not a excuse not to wear PPE where it is needed.
• Wash your hands within the workshop before using the communal areas e.g. tea room and toilets.
• No longer bring biscuits and snacks to share.
• Until government track and trace system is fully operational, anyone who has used the workshop who subsequently tests positive for Covid-19 is requested to inform Jo Clarke or Dave Evers.

We will:

• Provide an outdoor handwashing station (soap and water) within the workshop, alcohol gel and anti-viral wipes.
• Limit the max. no. of people in the workshop, to allow for social distancing.
• Send anyone home who becomes unwell at the workshop and advise them to follow the stay at home guidance.
• Make signage in the workshop to remind everyone of these measures.
• Designate a keyholder each day to take responsibility for Health and Safety, including coronavirus control measures.
• Clean other objects and surfaces that are touched regularly on a daily basis, e.g. gate, padlocks, handwashing station.
• If advised that anyone who has been at the workshop has developed Covid-19, we will contact everyone who has been at the workshop at the same time as that person and advise them of track and trace guidance.
• Print these instructions and our coronavirus risk assessment so that they are available at the workshop.

Our risk assessments are available for other organisations and people to use and edit for non-commercial purposes only (this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License).

• London Green Wood coronavirus risk assessment for cooperative members
• London Green Wood coronavirus risk assessment for courses
• London Green Wood coronavirus risk assessment for public access

Because of the Covid-19 outbreak and following the government’s announcement, London Green Wood is closed to all for the foreseeable future. Really hoping to be back in a few weeks time. Unfortunatly this also means the end of our wood giveaways for isolating carvers. Hope everyone’s got some projects lined up at home.

POSTPONED FOLLOWING THE CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK
Saturday 21st March – 12 noon – 2pm – Abney Park Cemetary, Stoke Newington High Street, N16 0LH
Price £35pp

In this workshop learn the basics of green woodworking making a locally grown spatula to take home with you. Suitable for complete beginners.

Booking and further information here.