Helping to put together the Meadow at Shambala festival 2017

Shambala is a music festival held in Northamptonshire in August. Since 2014, I've made furniture for the Meadow area at the event every year and was invited to do it again in 2017.

The Meadow houses the Healing Field, at the centre of which is a fireplace surrounded by seating and plants. It's a beautiful spot and I love to see people relaxing and unwinding on seats that I've made, surrounded by tents that healers are working in.

A week beforehand, bundles of scrap wood from sawmills are delivered to each area of the festival to build seating, fences or whatever else is required. It's always exciting to cut the straps, pick through and see what timber there is to work with! It could be oak, larch, lime, cherry or something else and much of it is reused from previous years. Sometimes even the strapping itself is reused in a design...

This particular festival is very keen on having as little environmental impact as possible. To help with that goal, we try to reuse as much as possible from previous festivals when making new furniture. Since a lot of the benches and tables are made from durable timbers such as larch or oak, they last well outdoors and so between festivals they are often used by visitors and fishermen on the estate. At the beginning of the next festival, we wander around hunting out each piece from wherever it has been spirited off to. There is always real excitement when a particularly-loved item of furniture is found!

Some of the benches from 2014 are still going strong today. When much of the rest of the site has new woodwork every year, I really like that the Meadow has furniture that is really 'of the place' - it stays there all year round. The patina of age suits it well.

Another thing that I really love about working in the Meadow area is that many of the crew have been doing this for years and know each other well. Some benches reuse pieces of timber that were originally part of seating made by Bertie, a stalwart crew member who sadly passed away before I started helping at the Meadow. It's nice to think that his work is still present in some of these benches.

I also enjoyed working with some of the younger crew members on making items for this festival. This seat was a joint effort, using materials found onsite, and we had a great time putting it together!

It's not just seating that gets made for Shambala. For the last two years, one of the featured workshops has been paddleboard yoga. The people doing it head out onto the lake on their paddleboards and do yoga there. 

We were asked to make a jetty, so that the attendees could get onto the water easily. It's now a permanent feature in the grounds. 

It's not only useful for the workshops but is also a nice place to sit, surrounded by swan mussels and water plants. Don't try swimming though! The water is quite shallow and the thick, black mud is deep. The swan mussels shouldn't be eaten either, by the way. Just relax and enjoy the view.

Carving a rabbit onto a wooden bench

This elm bench seat had already been made by Alex Arthur at the Woodworks Project in Bath. He suggested to the client that I could carve the design that they wanted on it.

I didn't want to make the lettering too deep, so carved a textured surface inside a double border. This catches the light so that the letters read easily from any angle. All of the carving here was done using traditional hand tools.

It was a nice surprise when the person commissioning the bench asked if I could also produce a simple, quick carving of a rabbit on there, peeping out from behind a log. The rabbit needed to look cute, but still fairly realistic. I'm very happy with the result as the young rabbit looks out from behind the old log with a bluebell growing nearby.

Carving workshops and making a bench for LinkAge in Lawrence Weston, Bristol with younger and older participants

Running workshops for LinkAge is always a lot of fun. They organise projects to try and get young and old people working together, encouraging communication between two groups that might not otherwise come into contact in a positive situation.

I've led several workshops in the west of Bristol for LinkAge previously and it was great to be asked to run these two days at Blaise Weston Court retirement home in Lawrence Weston.

Everything was set up in the main atrium of the building, so residents could drop in and have a go if they wanted to. There were two possible activities; making a simple, shallow relief carving or working together to make a bench from larch timber, to go in the garden of the home.

I hadn't run a session in this kind of environment before and noticed that many people having a go had mobility issues, which would perhaps make going to a venue elsewhere difficult and unappealing. It was great to see them getting stuck into the activity in a more convenient setting and some people commented that they really enjoyed using tools again, after a working life in a trade such as electrician.

Three young people from the local Gateway school were also helping to build the bench and they worked very hard, alongside one of the residents of the home, making a great job of the finished bench.

Everyone seemed very happy with how things went and I hope that the bench will be in the garden for a long time to come!

Giving a talk about the new Downs bench to the Clifton and Hotwells Improvement Society in Bristol

Last Tuesday, The Clifton and Hotwells Improvement Society (CHIS) met for their Annual General Meeting. I was invited along to talk about the bench that they commissioned and which was installed on Clifton Down earlier this year.

After the society business was concluded, the chairman Brian introduced me and I spoke for a while about the different subjects carved on the bench and the stories around researching them. There was a slideshow of images to illustrate it.

As well as talking about these subjects, I gave a very brief demonstration of relief carving techniques and answered questions. 

It seemed to go very well and several people came up afterwards and chatted about their different experiences of carving. I learnt a few interesting things too! Thank you to CHIS for commissioning me to make the bench and for inviting me to talk at their AGM. Thanks also to M. Shapland, who took the photos on this post.

Working with LinkAge to teach younger and older people woodcarving in Shirehampton's Tithe Barn, in Bristol

LinkAge work to bring younger and older people together on projects, to promote communication between two groups that don't always get the chance to meet in such positive environments.

I've worked with LinkAge before, on a project to make a bench for Shirehampton in Bristol. It was a  pleasure to be invited back to work with them again for two days at Shirehampton's Tithe Barn. 

The young people who came all attend 'The Orb', which is associated with the local Oasis Academy Brightstowe school. 

The Orb particularly caters for students who aren't getting on well with conventional education. Chatting to some of them, it was very interesting to hear their thoughts on the normal classroom environment. They all enjoyed the opportunity that The Orb gave to be able to have a say in organising their studies to fit the way that they learn, rather than being forced into the normal routines of the classroom.

Eileen was also hard at work over the two days, creating a carved oak plaque for her garden.

I think that everyone attending learned quite a bit about woodworking. There was a choice: either making plaques from cedar or oak wood to take home or working on a bench for the garden at the barn.

Making the bench first involved cutting the oak legs to length using a bow saw - no mean feat!

 The seat was then shaped, using a drawknife to round the edges.

It then needed to have holes drilled into it and to be carved with designs that had been drawn on, showing the barn and a design of cart special to the area.

Two of the young people also carved and assembled a plaque for The Orb using a bow saw off cut, as a nice surprise for the staff there.

The bench came out really well and will last a long time, as it is made from durable oak and sweet chestnut timbers.

Thanks to Ricky, Susan and Laura at LinkAge and to everyone who came along for their hard work on the two sessions. I also had some very happy news on this project.

Ricky, who is one of the senior workers at LinkAge, told me that they felt that the previous benchmaking project that I'd led for them had gone so well that they were now using it as an example in funding applications and other important publicity work.

They had asked me to run some of these new sessions for them because it was particularly important that, as part of a major new project, they went well. They felt that I'd be able to help ensure that the new sessions were a success. I've got to say that it was very satisfying to hear how pleased they were with my work.

Helping to make the Meadow beautiful at Shambala festival 2015

The Shambala festival is held at a stately home called Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire in the UK. Last year, I was asked to come along and make benches from sawmill waste boards, to be put in the Meadow field. I was delighted to be asked to come back this year to do it again.

The Meadow is a lovely, calm corner of the festival where the healers practice their skills and Tribe of Doris hold music-related activities.

At the end of last year's event, some of the benches were hidden away in a very quiet area of the site and it was great to see that they had survived quite happily. The sturdy larch timbers showed very few signs of decay, even under a layer of moss!

I used the surface darkening of the wood on one bench to carve lighter patterns, which represented the sun and moon:

Under a tarpaulin shelter, in a peaceful spot under a large sycamore by a lake, it was fun to plan new benches for the field. We worked happily under there, even when the rain came down all day! Everything was made using only hand tools, apart from a cordless drill.

There weren't just benches to be made. Annette, who oversees the healing field, had a special request too.

Someone had asked before the festival if it would be possible to create an area in which he could propose to his unsuspecting girlfriend. A particularly beautiful large tent had been chosen in which to do it:

Now five small shrines were needed, to represent the elements of air, water, earth, fire and wood. I made them using slab wood and also tree branches that had been removed by estate workers just before the festival.

The small tables were put around the outside edge of the tent and decorated with relevant things (because of fire risks, candle-shaped lights were used instead of real flames). It felt like a real privilege to make these items to be part of such an important occasion for the two people, their families and friends.

...and she said yes!

I wasn't the only person working with wood in the Meadow. Len sorted out the structures needed around the campsite, as well as designing a covered seat that looked great with foliage draped over it.

Clyde and Nathan also made structures that helped to make the site look welcoming.

Nathan and I dismantled some older benches and he reused the useful boards in new benches that were sturdier and will hopefully last until next year too. They are at the front on the right in the picture below, with Clyde's fence visible behind:

One new bench for this year was inspired by the straps that tied together the wood bundles when they were delivered. These straps were tough bands, stronger than the woven plastic ones that such bundles normally have securing them. I'd fancied making a suspended seat since the previous year and these straps would be useful. It was also nice to reuse such items from all around the site, instead of leaving them to be thrown away.

All of the benches were designed to be comfortable and I liked the deckchair-like slump of this one, even if it was quite hard to get out of (like a traditional deckchair, when I think about it). All the more reason to stay sitting there and relax!

The straps turned out to be quite strong enough to take plenty of people sitting on the seat, even when Len jumped all over it to test it.

The final thing to be made was a gate to separate the public area and crew camping. Nathan and I reused the gates from last year. One had darkened on its top surface, so that was the night sky (with stars and a UFO carved on it) and the other was day. Between them, the rays of the rising sun were fixed on.

After all the building, it was time to go and party! Here's a few final images of the festival itself. Thanks to everyone for making it a great Shambala 2015. I hope to see you all again next year.