Reimagine the Commons: A Gathering Space in the Woods

Join us for a community design workshop exploring how we can shape a woodland space that celebrates our shared connection to nature.

As we spend more and more time indoors, often disconnected from nature, its seasonal cycles, fascinating species, and multi-sensory richness, this workshop invites participants to reconnect through collective creativity, ecological thinking, and collaborative design.

Together, we’ll ask: How can we design with more than just humans in mind? How can spaces be both human-centred and ecologically conscious? How can architecture move beyond minimising harm, and instead actively care for the living world? 🌱

This workshop invites people who live, work, and visit the Ouseburn Valley to contribute to the Pavilion of the Commons: a volunteer-led, community-built woodland pavilion made from natural and reclaimed materials for the Ouseburn Festival (4–5 July).

The pavilion will become a shared gathering space in the woods for nature-based craft workshops, skill-sharing, and collective making during the festival, a place to learn, create, and spend time together in the woodland.

Through collaborative exchange, we’ll explore how this space might take form in response to both human and more-than-human needs, balancing connection, making and belonging with sensitivity to the surrounding ecosystem and the species already living in the woodland.

🍃 What will happen during the workshop?

We’ll imagine how this shared woodland space could look, feel, and sit within its environment.

a table, seating, a surrounding shelter.

Activities will include:

🌱 Imagining habitats, gathering spaces, and shelters for both wildlife and people

🛠️ Exploring natural and reclaimed materials, colours, and forms for the pavilion

✏️ Collaborative drawing, mapping, and visual exploration inspired by the woodland

💬 Group discussions around stewardship, ecology, accessibility, and collective care

Together, we’ll challenge conventional ideas of architecture and public space, exploring how design can become a grounded interface for connection, between people, place, and the wider ecosystem.

The workshop is part of Pavilion of the Commons, a community-led project bringing people together through collaborative craft, ecological architecture, and regenerative making practices.

✨ Through this process, we’ll explore how creativity and collective making can help shape spaces of coexistence, care, and connection between humans and the more-than-human world.🌿

About the facilitator

Roxana is a designer, maker, educator, and community builder working across ecological architecture and environmental social engagement. Her practice explores how collaborative making and regenerative design can help people reconnect with their sense of agency, care, and relationship to the natural world and each other.

Who is it for?

People who live, work, or spend time in the Valle, including artists, makers, residents, workers, nature lovers, young people, and anyone curious about ecology, community-building, and creative design.

No experience is needed, just curiosity, imagination, and a willingness to create together.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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