The Charter for Trees

Thoroughsale Wood, Corby, July 2016

Bringing together my interests in history, trees and how people relate to place, The Charter for Trees, Woods and People aims to guide policy and practice in the UK, "enabling a future in which trees and people stand stronger together."

The Charter is to be launched on November 6th 2017, the 800^th anniversary of the historic 1217 Charter of the Forest which established rights of access and use for the Royal Forests in England.

I am currently working with other researchers in science, archaeology and literature, to think about how we relate to trees and woodlands. This also springs from my current project in collaboration with artist Carole Miles for Our Woods festival in Corby, celebrating parts of the Rockingham Forest. For this project we are considering time travel through the woods, how we experience the woodland's constant change from season to season.

Past projects are also informing my thoughts at the moment. Forests and woodlands stimulate our imaginations as we consider them as places of folklore and enchantment, places of sanctuary but sometimes fear, and places of the wild. Our Sidelong walk The Hunter and the Hunted played with these ideas, of how woodlands exist in our imaginations.

Woodlands are also places of industry, and they share their history with people who have had working relationships with trees over centuries. They have also been useful for hiding things. In my project for Dukes Wood I had an intriguing time exploring the woods and stumbling across traces of its past as a secret inland oil field, hidden deep within. Last autumn at the University, learning about LiDAR, a technique using lasers which can penetrate woodland canopies to reveal what is beneath, I was startled by a number of large manmade structures that suddenly became clear on the images. These were 20 or more ammunition parks, making use of the tree canopy to store explosives where the enemy in the air would never spot them. (Unfortunately the images are under copyright so I cannot share them here.)

I hope that I can link up some of my projects with the Tree Charter as it resonates so well with me. Carole and I were delighted to find that our Our Woods event, Continuum: a time travelling woodland walk has been included in the Charter's winter publication of LEAF!

I hope some of you will be able to join us to explore the woods in March.