The Story behind Dynamic Woods
Dynamic Woods is a Scottish charity based in the beautiful Inzievar Woodland in West Fife. Funded by our partner organization, Scottish Wood, we aim to benefit our surrounding environment and community with a focus on conservation and education.
Born out of the passion Maggie and Jim Birley have for doing things differently, Dynamic Woods has existed for 20 years taking the profits from the Scottish Wood and supporting a range of projects and organizations around Scotland.
Now with an employee of its own for the first time, Dynamic Woods is looking to spread its wings and see where the future takes it.
How Dynamic Woods came to be
A letter from Jim Birley, one of our Founders
“It was a damp and drizzly day in July 1995 when Maggie and I, and 14-month-old baby Kitty, arrived at Inzievar. On the lorry behind us was our new home, an old static caravan scrapped from a holiday site, and once this had been carefully winched off the lorry and pushed onto the boggy ground beside the track, it became our warm and dry family home for the next three years.
Maggie worked full-time then, but for me, time was spent childminding, house building, foresting and playing at being a sawmill – which was cutting up random windblown trees from the surrounding woods to see if they could be used in the house build. It was a busy and happy time for us, and when our second daughter, Joanne, arrived in to caravan living, the house building took on an urgency, so that by the time Douglas arrived, in early 1999, we had been living in a half-finished house for over a year.
It has been called the “accidental sawmill”, and that’s because there was never an intention for us to start a sawmill here, it just happened organically. My “playing” became a hobby, and then a living, and finally - in the year 2000 - a business. But it was a business model with a difference….
After Maggie and I were married - and before kids - we worked as Agricultural volunteers for an organisation in El Salvador. We worked with refugees returning to the country after years of civil war, and we were impressed with the community structures they organised when setting up completely new communities in the countryside. The not-for-profit “mother” organisation would go on to set up, own and support profit-making businesses (such as blacksmiths and workshops) so that the communities could establish and function.
More common now, this model was unusual then, and we thought it could work in Scotland too, and so when – without intending it – a business opportunity slapped us in the face, it presented us with a challenge…. “Prove it!”
I have to say here that it was Maggie’s vision and tenacity, along with an inherent predisposition and drive for social justice that was the driving force behind the way we set up and ran Scottish Wood. And what a vision…. Scottish Wood, the sawmill, became successful beyond our wildest ideas, and now Dynamic Woods - the “mother” charity that was set up to own Scottish Wood, has a lengthy portfolio of organisations it has supported over the last 23 years.
Sadly, Maggie died from cancer in June 2018. This left me running the now fast-expanding sawmill on my own, until, in 2020 Kitty came to work alongside me. She was then 26, and she came armed with an Msc in Environmental Science.
It is hard to find the words to say how fun and rewarding it is to work alongside your child. By now Scottish Wood was a busy yard with 14 employees, and so for me to be able to catch a bit of Kitty’s infectious enthusiasm and inspired ideas, helped me to lift my focus away from just running a busy and relentlessly expanding business, and to see again the bigger picture and the reasons why we are set up as we are.
But tragedy struck again. Kitty, a keen white-water kayaker, was killed in a kayaking accident in November 2022.
The loss and sadness left us all a bit broken. 2023 has been a year of coming to terms with this and trying to find ways of moving forward. Joanne returned home from living in Canada and chose to help me and to pick up much of Kitty’s work. Johannes, Kitty’s partner, left his job at Stirling University to become the new Operations Lead for Dynamic Woods.
Working together with Joanne and Johannes has been a real gift for me, and has, I think, helped us all get through a difficult year.
As I write this, we are about to launch into the New Year of 2024, and we’re doing this now with a new, and growing sense of hope and optimism - and new possibilities.
We have an experienced and supportive team at Scottish Wood, and with Maggie’s vision still very much at the heart of all we do - and now alongside this a burning desire to carry forward Kitty’s love for her work and her life here – we are feeling positive and eager for the years ahead and for all the things we plan and hope to achieve.
And so, I look back in awe at the last 29 years and at all that has happened here over that time. To me it has been a place of great beauty – in so many ways, and I thank all of the countless number of people who have helped to make this place into what it is today”.
The People who made Dynamic Woods
We wouldn’t be where we are without the efforts of Maggie and Kitty Birley, two wonderful people who gave so much to the charity and the woodland. They are tremendously loved and tremendously missed and continue to inspire us to carry on the work they were so passionate about.
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Maggie
‘‘Maggie lived her life with conviction, generosity, humour, and action. She would never complain about something she could do something about; she would set about changing things, inevitably for the better.’’
She was instrumental in shaping Dynamic Woods and the Scottish Wood project.
Maggie spent her life advocating for social justice and was constantly pushing at the boundaries of mainstream business practice and the status quo. A major influencer in the fledgling hardwood industry, thereby amplifying the positive effects and aims of the Scottish Wood project. She described her approach as ‘‘forest radicalism’’!
Scottish Wood owes much of its success to Maggie and her vision.
She was a generous, positive, and loving mother of three. She was quick to laugh and to see humour in life. Her strength of character, and that of her love, is so clearly reflected in the lives of her children and the legacy she built.
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Kitty
Raised at Inzievar, Kitty grew up exploring the woodland, building dens, and climbing every tree. Full of laughter and always adventurous and curious, she often said ‘I just want to go play in the woods!’
Kitty joined the Dynamic Woods/Scottish Wood team in 2020, after completing an MSc in Environmental Management and Conservation. She helped take up the mantel of environmental and community work that had fallen to the wayside somewhat after Maggie’s death in 2018.
Then, in her words - ‘I spent half my days cutting through rhododendron with a chainsaw or gathering volunteers to build a dam across the outflow of the local pond – I mean who doesn’t love building dams! It’s great, and I feel like the work I do helps make the world a better place, even if the difference I make is a small one.’
We lost Kitty at the end of 2022, but her legacy is everywhere at Inzievar, through the vast areas of cleared rhododendron, the beaver dam she built with volunteers, and the grove of trees she planted.
Meet the Team
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Jim Birley
Founder
One of the original founders alongside his wife Maggie, and the original caretaker of Inzievar he runs our partner organization, Scottish Wood, but also continues to help guide the direction of Dynamic Woods and contribute his significant experience with and love for woodlands.
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Johannes Schamp
Operations Lead
After spending a few months working in the woodland part time, Jim convinced Johannes to join Dynamic Woods and restart its mission of environmental protection and social outreach. Johannes came on board in July 2023 and is responsible for the day to day operations of Dynamic Woods and leading its future development.
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Jo Birley
Development Consultant
Jo wears a great many hats working with Scottish Wood, ASHS, and Dynamic Woods but is a crucial part of the team helping the organization grow and develop.
She has been key to setting up Dynamic Woods’ website, finances, and woodland development plans.
