About us

London Green Wood is a not-for-profit co-operative and a community of green woodworkers based at Hackney City Farm and Abney Park. We hope to encourage crafty-ness, creativity and self-reliance in everybody who uses our spaces.

Our aims

• Create a welcoming and accessible green wood workshop for a diverse community of woodworkers.
• Promote green woodwork.
• Provide opportunities for people living in the city to learn traditional rural crafts.
• Create opportunities for people to learn new skills and earn money from their skills.

Encouraging diversity – by creating an open, inclusive and welcoming space – is a fundamental aim of London Green Wood and a core part of our operations, not just an add-on.

Woodwork is commonly seen as a career for men and a hobby for white men with white hair. Women and ethnic minority woodworkers are often treated with surprise and may be discouraged from woodworking because they do not see people who look like them represented. London Green Wood has always aimed to challenge the stereo-type of what a woodworker looks like.

History

London Green Wood was formed in 2011 by a group of volunteers with the intention of keeping a green wood workshop running at Abney Park Cemetery. We constituted as a community group in 2017 and incorporated as a Community Interest Company in 2018, registered in England and Wales no.11619000. In 2021 we moved our head office to Hackney City Farm and open there a second workshop.

Governance

As a Coop we follow the Co-operative Values & Principles.

Administration

• Directors are co-opted or elected at our AGM.
• Administrators are members that want to participate in the day to day operations of the Coop. They are secretary, treasurer, membership manager, webmaster, etc.
• Tutors are teaching our courses.
• Keyholders open/close the workshop.
• Members can use the workshop. They vote at the AGM.

Assembly

We have an online permanent assembly for the directors and administrators team.
Our AGM takes place at the beginning of each year.

Funding

We are self-funded mainly through our annual membership fees, profits from our courses and donations.

Occasionally we have received funding from the Worshipful Company of Turners, the Headley Trust, the National Lottery Community Fund, GLL Community Foundation, Tesco Bags of Help and Comic Relief.

We received non-financial support as one of 50 woodland enterprises on the Plunkett Foundation’s Making Local Woodlands Work project.

Partnerships

We are working in partnership with Hackney City Farm to develop a community woodworking space at the Farm. We also work in partnership with Abney Park Trust and Hackney Council, who host our Abney Park workshop space. Our bookings partner is Baluu based in London.

We are one of two London local groups of the Assocation of Pole-Lathe Turners and Green Woodworkers (the other being at Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses). We are also members of the Open Workshop Network.

We also work in collaboration with other community groups bringing woodwork skills to their sites. We have worked withWomen After Greatness, Super Roots, London Wildlife Trust and the Tri-Borough programme for care-leavers, an after school group from St Paul’s Steiner School, the Red Cross Asylum Seeker Support Group from Hackney Destitution Centre, Mind in Haringey, the youth charity Skyway and a self-organising group of home-educating families.

We have also delivered one-off events with partners such as: Oxford Brookes University, Islington Cub Scouts, Hackney Woodcraft Folk, Stokie Women’s Institute, Mossbourne Academy, Forty Hall Farm, The Orchard Project, Making Works on the Leybridge Estate, Stoke Newington Common Users Group, Timber Festival, Highgate Woods Community Day, Camden New Town Community Festival, the annual London Park City celebration at Netil Market and London Car Free Day.