In 2019, we established an annual Summer School in collaboration with Grown in Britain. Our aim is to explore home-grown timber that is under-utilised yet has lots of potential.

In 2022, we are very excited to be partnering with the V&A under its Field Notes’ project, allowing us to develop our Summer School programme in new ways and provide opportunities for a diverse community of participants.

Field Notes is a collaboration between the Make Good: Rethinking Material Futures programme (supported by John Makepeace OBE) at the V&A and Sylva Foundation. Together they are hosting a summer school inviting creative practitioners with an interest in wood as a material, and forests and woodlands as a place for learning and growing, to take part. The summer school takes place in person at Sylva Foundation’s Wood School in Oxfordshire in the first week of September. This will be preceded by a number of talks, seminars and mentoring sessions running online 15–19 August. The results of the Field Notes project will be presented in a display in the Furniture Gallery at the V&A in London in autumn 2022.

Participants have the opportunity to immerse themselves in all aspects of the Sylva Wood Centre: accessing our well-equipped workshops, working with our experienced teachers and connecting with our creative community. Alongside the creative and technical guidance we provide, the environmental work and principles of Sylva Foundation, Grown in Britain and the V&A's Make Good: Rethinking Material Futures programme are at the heart of the week-long project.

Grown in Britain

V&A Make Good: Rethinking Material Futures programme

To read the report from our 2021 Summer School, please click here.