How See Through Together’s YouTube Woodland Skills Playlist reduces carbon, and how you can help
Welcome to See Through Together’s sibling See Through News.
Ben Law’s Woodland Year is one of many projects designed to serve the See Through Goal of Speeding Up Carbon Drawdown by Helping the Inactive Become Active.
Here’s how it works, and how you can help. (If you just want to know how to help, skip to the bottom of this article).
What is Ben Law’s Woodland Year?
Ben Law’s Woodland Year (BLWY) is a fly-on-the-bark observational documentary following a year with ‘Britain’s Greatest Living Woodsman’ Ben Law in Prickly Nut Wood, his Sussex home and workplace.
This article gives the background on how this footage was filmed, and its decade-long odyssey to public view via the See Through Together YouTube channel.
The year starts with Ben selecting his two apprentices for the next year. As the seasons pass, the series reveals their experiences through the annual woodland cycle, seen through their eyes of apprentices and teacher.
As the seasons unfold, we’re with them in the woods, as Ben passes on his skills to his apprentices. We’re by their side as they sned, fell, sort, scribe, split, cleave and roundwood-timber-frame their way to becoming 21st century coppicing woodsmen.
Big poles support buildings. Shoots can become beanpoles. Stools produce the next cycle.
Just as Ben teaches his apprentices how to sort different types of product for different purposes, See Through Together edits the footage to suit different types of audience.
The Poles: BLWY Main Episodes
The main episodes follow the seasons, and the different types of work they bring to Prickly Nut Wood.
See Through Together is releasing the main episodes over the course of a year, in ‘real time’, to reflect the seasonal rhythms of a coppicing woodsman.
Episodes vary in length, reflecting the intensity of new skills being acquired. The series starts with introducing Ben as he invites five candidates to Prickly Nut Wood for Apprentice Selection Week.
With weeks to wait before the next episode drop, in synch with the seasons when they were filmed, See Through Together’s team of pro bono filmmakers have edited two types of bonus videos, related to the current episode.
One type goes short, the other goes long.
The Shoots: BLWY Shorts
YouTube created its Shorts format to emulate the sub-60”, vertical format that TikTok made so appealing to younger demographics.
BLWY Shorts, released during the gaps between Episodes, are clips from the main episode, specially edited to suit the Shorts portrait format,.
Shorts act as a gateway for the casual viewer to start their journey into the woods. They might be young people who’ve never heard of Ben or coppicing, or TV viewers who remember Ben from his appearance in the all-time favourite episode of “the long-running British architectural series Grand Designs.
The Shorts are attractively subtitled, as many short-form viewers watch videos with the sound off, or in noisy environments. They also feature other visual augmentations that older demographics might find distractingly fussy, but are appreciated by younger users.
Here’s the first example:
Woodland experts, however, will want something more substantial…
The Stool: BLWY Extras
Ben’s range of expertise, and the integrated, holistic nature of coppicing, means the BLWY footage has appeal to a range of different specialist interests: woodland crafts, nature, natural building, wildlife, forestry, human interest etc..
Such specialists want more than a passing reference, or short sequence, so we’ll also be adding Extras between Ben Law’s Woodland Year episodes.
BLWY Extras are longer videos, similar in concept to DVD Extras or Extended Play records. Like freshly-coppiced areas that open up the woodland floor to enhance biodiversity, the Extras give space to fully express and explore dormant or hidden elements. Some examples:
- The original crowdfunding video, including a link to an article about the project’s genesis.
- Uncut versions of the candidate interviews with us, and with Ben, like Mikee Uncut.
- Longer edits of scenes like Ben’s apprentice candidates visiting the two caravans that would be their homes for the year, which only last a few seconds in the full Episode.
The video descriptions to this content includes links to longer text articles on everything from the See Through News and See Through Carbon websites, to specific articles like this See Through News article relating the remarkable story of how BLWY project took more than a decade to reach the public.
So What’s This About Reducing Carbon?
See Through is developing projects that, while still engaging and entertaining as per the See Through Methodology, end up with clear actions ordinary people can take to measurably reduce carbon.
These projects are more ambitious, and specific, than the usual ‘sort your recycling’/eat a bit less meat’/ride a bike to work’ individual behaviour changes. People already know all about those.
Instead, See Through actions are targeted at the big levers of carbon reduction, like accurate corporate carbon reporting and changes in government regulation.
If you’re curious how they might work, here are some currently being developed by other members of See Through’s global network of pro bono experts:
But What Can I Do Now?
Ben Law’s Woodland Year was made by professional filmmakers volunteering their time as effective climate activists.
The series is not a commercial project. Its outcomes are measured not in money, social media reach, or other proxies for ‘impact’, but in the same unit used by climate scientists, i.e. metric tonnes of carbon dioxide reduced or sequestered (‘CO2e’).
Pending the completion of the specific actionable projects mentioned above, here are some options for anyone wanting to do more than just watch YouTube videos:
- Boost Us: the usual social media stuff – subscribe, Like, click, comment, share with your friends etc. If you have a social media reach and are interested in promoting this project, email info@seethroughnews.org for updated release schedules, with the opportunity to preview each new release.
- Join Us: email volunteer@seethroughnews.org to see how you can help this zero-budget project. We have plenty of roles requiring varying degrees of expertise and experience.
- Follow Us: Subscribe to See Through News Newsletter. It’s free, keeps your data private, and plops into your inbox every Sunday, updating you on new content and developments See Through’s innovative mission to measurably reduce carbon. Share any See Through content with your friends
- Critique Us: Use the comment features, on YouTube or here on the website, to give your thoughts on any aspect of any See Through project. Being innovative involves making mistakes, and we benefit as much from your criticism as your praise (though feel free to praise us too, if you want…)
Thanks for your interest and support.