A taster session
Last night (Feb 11th, 2026), we broadcast our first Wood-wide Webinar
We introduced participants to Woods for the Trees – who we are, what we do – then Max talked on three separate topics – mini-TED talks, if you will, covering some of themes that we’ll be looking at over the next year or so in our series of full, monthly webinars.
To tease our theme The Wood Age, the subject of one of Max’s books, took a close look at the relationship between William Shakespeare, his plays and the Globe Theatre. The Bard was self-consciously aware of forests as models of human society; but also of the theatrical value of a circular wooden theatre in encouraging the audience to see themselves as part of a grand thought-experiment of the imagination, conjouring his ‘Wooden O’ as a space of magic and wonder. Max also made the link between The Globe and that prehistoric enigma, Seahenge, whose psychodramas may have been every bit as complex as those of Shakespeare’s plays.
In Creating a Woodland Ecology from scratch Max introduced the Natural History theme. In twelve years he has helped transform a derelict sheep pasture into an ecological haven for birds, insects, mammals, amphibians and trees. The lesson? Give nature space and it will come; and it will come sooner than you might think.
Finally, Max introduced participants to the US Pomological, a wonderful collection of watercolours, predominantly by women artists, commissioned by the US Dept of Agriculture to record precious fruit cultivars before they were lost. By itself the art is superb; as a record of the partnership between humans and trees it is even more valuable.
We encourage pro-active participation in these webinars, through the Chat feature and during Q and A’s. All funds raised from the modest fee go to support our work.
You can view the slides we showed here.
Join us next time, on Feb 26th, for the first of our expanded webinars.
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