from Sunday Herald, 11 January 2009
A pioneering Scottish woodwork project famed for its environmentally friendly furniture has been broken up, prompting bitter recriminations, redundancies and regrets.
Borders Woodschool, at Ancrum near Jedburgh, has been restructured and its co-founder and manager, Eoin Cox, sacked, along with six other staff. The associated retail gallery, BuyDesign at the nearby Harestanes visitor centre, has also been shut down.
For Cox, the break-up is a deeply upsetting betrayal of everything that Woodschool stood for. But for its owners, Borders Forestry Trust, the changes are vital to ensure its financial survival.
Woodschool was started in 1996 by Cox and the renown wood artist, Tim Stead, who died of cancer in 2000. Stead helped make the Millennium Clock Tower in Edinburgh’s Royal Museum, a chair for the Pope’s visit to Scotland in 1981 and furniture in Glasgow’s Cafe Gandolfi and elsewhere.
Over the last 12 years Woodschool has won world-wide acclaim as a model of sustainable development. It has been warmly praised, and funded, by the Scottish government and environmental groups.
Its aim was to use Scottish talent to create attractive furniture out of Scottish hardwoods, instead of burning or exporting the timber. It encouraged many others to do the same, and helped develop the Scottish Furniture Makers Association.
But now, according to Cox, its legacy has been trashed. “I am so disappointed that an environmental charity like Borders Forest Trust that is supposed to be rooted in the community is being run by people that are only concerned about the bottom line,” he told the Sunday Herald.
“A corporate mentality has destroyed the creative culture that Tim Stead, myself and many others had thought possible all those years ago,” he said. “It is heartbreaking.”
The closure of BuyDesign and the break-up of Woodschool were a “death knell for applied craftsmanship” in Scotland, Cox alleged. “I have worked my ass off trying to give opportunity in a open business model that has been admired the world over,” he claimed.
“But the suit mentality has come back in the form of badged-up fleece-wearing ‘environmentalists’ and bitten me on the ass because they never liked the maverick style in the first place.”
Cox insisted that the BuyDesign gallery was profitable, and has tried unsuccessfully to buy out the business. It attracted 15,000 visitors a year and had generated £1.8 million worth of income since 2001, he said.
But its profitability was strongly disputed by John Hunt, the chairman of Borders Forestry Trust, which has run Woodschool as its trading subsidiary. The gallery lost £15,000 last year and had debts in excess of £50,000, he said.
“We had no choice but to take action to stop losing money, otherwise the business would have gone into liquidation,” he argued. “It’s been a very difficult and painful process.”
Cox had to take some responsibility for the financial problems, Hunt contended, adding: “It’s obviously painful for him.” Hunt also dismissed as “complete nonsense” the accusation that Woodschool’s original aims were being abandoned.
Hunt pointed out that a new co-operative called Real Wood Studios was being formed by six Woodschool employees, which would run the business in the future. This would uphold the original ethos of increasing indigenous use of Scottish hardwoods, he said.
“Changes involving redundancies are never going to be easy, but we needed new ideas and new investment,” he added. “It’s sad, but some change was inevitable.”
Cox, however, won some support from Jan Bebbington, a professor of accounting and sustainable development at St Andrews University. “I am very sad to see an exemplar of sustainable development being scaled back,” she said.
“As a member of Borders Forest Trust, I am sad that what was once in common ownership appears to be moving into private ownership, and that we did not have a chance to support Woodschool in its existing form.”
Bebbington argued that examples like Woodschool were needed to show what socially and environmentally responsible businesses could look like. “Business models that put ownership of resources into community hands and which sustain local economies are much needed - especially in the current economic climate.”
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