Evolving the Forest - 2019 Annual Conference of the Royal Forestry Society
Trees are perhaps the most ubiquitous objects in our lives. Despite the fact that some countries – like our own – are largely denuded of ancient forest, we still feel a powerful tug of something primitive as we look on a vast oak or a towering fir. We love the roll call of names even if many could not identify or perhaps have never seen their namesake.
Oak. Ash. Hawthorn. Holly. Alder. Beech. Birch. Elm. Hazel. Maple. Sycamore. Rowan. Yew.
This three-day symposium draws together a wide variety of voices to explore a heritage of woodland and forest and look to their future. In celbration of the Forestry Commission’s centenary it looks back at the last 100 years and looks forward to the next. We draw on the wisdom of foresters, environmental managers, policy-makers, scientists and other experts; we hear the voices of artists, designers, writers, philosophers and others who wander and wonder in our varied British forests; and we learn from others around the world about their own cultural connections to trees, and the wood that produces some of the world’s most beautiful objects.
This symposium incorporates the annual conference of the Royal Forestry Society (RFS) and is their primary contribution to marking the Forestry Commission’s centenary. The event is produced by art.earth, renowned for their re-invention of the academic conference into something inclusive, collaborative, friendly, experiential and tactile.
There are nine broad themes:
- Our historic relationship with trees and woodland
- Landscape and the sublime forest
- Land use, agroforestry and new approaches to cropping
- Trees and woodland in society and as a source of health and wellbeing
- Woodland habitat as a home to many
- Artistic and literary responses
- Climate change impacts
- Wood as a material / contemporary timber-based design
- How we live with trees, ethical approaches, and questions of sentience
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