Meet the Tutors
Steve Ridd
Steve has worked in regenerating woodlands for the past 15 years, bringing neglected woods back onto a traditional coppice cycle, laying hedges around them and making charcoal and biochar from otherwise ‘waste’ wood.
From this work he developed a love of other traditional crafts and now also teaches pole lathe turning and wood carving in the UK and Ireland, including several years teaching traditional crafts at the Northumbria National Park centre at The Sill and at festivals across the country.
He is an active member of the Irish Bodgers Group, bringing together traditional woodworkers throughout the country to promote heritage crafts.
He runs regular craft courses from his home workshop in Kilmovee, County Mayo
Find me on Instagram: @northernwoodmonkey
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Ineke Gijsbers
Ineke studied Agroforestry at Wageningen Agricultural University, The Netherlands. She has worked in silvopastoral systems in Wales, Burkina Faso and Mali and has also supported agroforestry projects in Honduras.
Together with Steve Ridd, she has restored and managed 2 privately-owned coppice woodlands in England, and has several years’ experience in hedge-laying and charcoal making.
Currently she is busy creating a food forest at their new home Tuath Nua in Co. Mayo. She is very excited about the prospects of restoring an old hazel-oak-ash woodland at Future Oak Farm onto its traditional coppice cycle, while sharing its ancient management skills with others.
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Nadine Grundy
Nadine has a passion for Coppicing, hedgelaying, growing and working in harmony with the land.
She feels a deep connection to the land and her work because she make her crafts from the ground up, making from the materials that are around her and available at the time of year, either growing, coppicing or foraging her own materials, scraping, splitting and processing them by hand with axes and knives and then shaping and decorating them into lovingly crafted functional items. All of the material from the coppice gets used, be it for charcoal, deadhedging, crafts or colour!
She grows and cuts a willow coppice (Sally Garden) in the West of Ireland and is regenerating a neglected piece of land by replanting native broadleaf trees and making it a place for wildlife to thrive, She also sells those coppiced willow cuttings in the winter months so people can grow their own willow, for crafts, fuel, hedging or for nature.
She makes all manner of craft items from bowls, spoons, stools and brooms to woven baskets from split wood, bark and wild fibres. She also has a passion for natural colour and is growing a dye garden here in Mayo to make her own natural paints.
She is a qualified secondary teacher and also has a forest school leader qualification. She was the rep of East Midlands Coppice group in the UK which is part of the NCFED for many years and have been a part of teaching and restoring woodland coppice for the past 15 years
