Welcome to Our Woods

South Wales Valleys

Community organisation runs forests for the benefit of all.

Residents of the ex-mining town of Treherbert, in the South Wales Valleys, had always been told not to go into the woods. The trees had once been planted for pit props, the timber splints used to prop up coal pits. In the years since the mines closed, the forests had become overgrown. Older people passed on the stories of danger intended to keep residents away. At night, young boys crept in and set fire to trees or cars.

Until one day, 22 years ago, a project worker had an idea to stop the arson attacks: open up the forest to young people and teach them how to start controlled fires. Ian Thomas, who now directs Welcome to Our Woods, remembers the controversy around the project in its infancy. But there hasn’t been an arson attack since.

“We’re not reinventing anything,” Thomas says. “What we’re doing is using many techniques that were used in the past. It could change the whole narrative of this place and where this place is going for the better.”

Welcome to Our Woods has opened up the woods to residents of nearby towns. It generates income from a hydroelectric scheme, rents growing spaces in polytunnels and it just bought a library in the centre of Treherbert to host yoga classes, a pay as you feel cafe and other community groups.

Since 2017, Thomas and Martyn Broughton, a personal trainer who runs exercise and wellbeing classes through Welcome to Our Woods, have joined with other groups in the Welsh Valley as Project Skyline. The project is working with residents to reimagine their relationship with the land around where they live.

“We’re not talking about ownership because as far as we are concerned we already own that land, so it’s about what level of stewardship we get,” Thomas says. “This land is opportunity for us.”