This is the first of two posts in which I will talk about the start of the practical process of building the wooden elements of project in the workshop of the woodworking programme at the Grassmarket Community Project (GCP). This first part leans heavily towards the personal and introspective elements of my experience, and Part 2, which will be posted shortly after this post, will focus much more on the practical side of things.
I started woodworking in early 2018, with a beginner’s spoon carving kit bought for me by a loved one who sought to help me find a hobby that might help me better navigate the mental health issues that have been a feature of my adult life. It worked immediately, and with a power that nothing else has come close to, and became the activity in my life most likely to bring me peace, both mentally and, through the dissipation of anxious energy, physically.
For five-and-a-half years I have been a woodworker, and it has been an almost entirely solitary activity. Starting in the spare room of a 2nd Floor flat in Hull, then in a garage in Exeter, and now occupying about half of the living room in my Edinburgh flat:
It has also been mostly disconnected from my work as an academic, indeed it has frequently served as a necessary escape from the stresses and frustrations of the Monday to Friday 9-5 of my life.
It was therefore quite a leap for me to devise and then work on this project, which sees me working closely with other people in a shared workshop space, on a project for my employer, and in a broader creative partnership with colleagues from the university. This double shift was daunting for me. Could I work well with other people when I was so used to collaborating only with wood? Would bringing woodworking into my professional life rob me of the separation that had saved my mental health from deteriorating too badly over the past five-and-a-half years?
Both of these questions were very real, and the stakes truly felt quite high. My main reason for taking this chance was the importance that I attached to the communitarian ethos of the project, as discussed by myself and Jennifer in previous posts.
It was the ethos and mission of the Grassmarket Community Project (GCP) which confirmed to me that they are the perfect partners with whom to collaborate on this project. The GCP has, in their own words, expanded from an initial focus on homelessness to a wider view of their community and a commitment to working “with people who are dealing with a wide range of complex issues including mental and physical health problems, learning difficulties, poverty, substance misuse, social isolation and more.1”
Building from my own understandings of the benefits which woodworking can bring to mental health, the woodworking programme at the GCP seemed to be the perfect partner for us both in practical terms, but also to embed the work of our project in the local community and in ways that might in some small way support their work.
What I didn’t realise until I started to work in their workshop in mid-July was that I would have so much to gain personally from this experience. I learned that whilst in the past my mental health had benefitted so much from woodworking in part due to the solitude and peacefulness I found in wood, what I had never really experienced was the human comradeship it could bring.
I moved to Edinburgh in January 2022 at the age of 42, just weeks after the end of an eleven year relationship. I found myself living alone in a new city where I knew no-one, and in the 20 months since making this move I have singularly failed to find any close friendships outside work. Almost all of my time is spent alone and this social isolation, indeed almost total absence of sociality, has negatively impacted my mental health. Woodworking has certainly helped me along the way, but I have realised recently just how damaging my loneliness has been. I have suffered from a lack of people and friendship in my life, and wonderful and generous as wood is it could never fill this gap for me.
In the past five weeks working in the GCP I have come to realise that I have been gaining something that I didn’t anticipate when we developed the partnership and formally commissioned the GCP to make our piece in their workshop. The community and comradeship I have found in the workshop with their team has helped me to face my own social isolation, and helped me through a significant spike in my anxiety during this summer of unrelentingly nightmarish climate news.
