If you’re coming to our conference at the end of this month, we hope you’ll join us in the evening for a very special cinema screening. (November 28, 6.30pm).
Over at the Hexham Forum Cinema we are going to watch Magician with Wood. It’s a film by Beatrix Wood of Trix Pix telling the story of the home built by the wood sculptor and furniture designer, Tim Stead, in the Scottish Borders.
Filmmaker Beatrix Wood will be joining us for a in-person Q&A session following the film.
The battle to secure the future of one of Scotland’s most extraordinary homes is captured in this award-winning documentary. The Steading is a Grade A-listed work of art, sculpted from wood by late artist Tim Stead. His wife, Maggy, Is fighting to protect Tim’s legacy and inspire future generations to create work with wood.
Tim Stead made furniture for galleries, castles, cathedrals and even for Pope John Paul II for his visit to Murrayfield in 1981, yet it was the open intuitive, untutored response of ordinary people that most nourished him. People delighted in his work’s warm honesty and wanted to live with it. Three of his most powerful pieces relate to architecture. The rood screen and furniture for the North Sea Oil Industries Memorial Chapel in Aberdeen, was commissioned in 1989. The initial letters of the woods used in the chair backs spell out the simple but poignant “We remember yew”.
The film traces how Tim’s belief to put back in more than he took out of the environment led to pioneering the creation of the first community woodland in Britain which kickstarted the community land ownership movement in Scotland and internationally. The action is punctuated by a selection of Tim’s eloquent poems.
The film is an inspirational story about a family, the bonds of love and grief, loyalty and friendship, collaboration and community alongside our relationship with trees and Nature as a catalyst for our creativity and well-being in the face of climate change.
Says Living Woods director Mark Shipperlee: “We’re very grateful to the Forum Cinema for this opportunity, and we encourage all our supporters to come along and see this inspirational film.”