The Touchwood Project

Hello there, I’m Rachel DuBois. My husband Malcolm Handoll and I started the Touchwood Project here on Orkney, a cluster of surprisingly happening islands off the northern coast of Scotland that’s known for its Stone Age and Viking archaeological sites (think standing stones and ancient burial chambers).

Standing stones at 3am in summer

We make up the core of the Touchwood Project, a social enterprise that’s about having fun and enjoying saving the planet.

Touchwood keeps growing and changing, so I’ve rewritten this little “About us” section 6 times already in the 18 months we’ve been going, but I’d say we’re looking for ways to lead our tribe (a nod here to Seth Godin’s Tribes).

We want to help people like us who want to make the world a better place and are ready to do more to make that happen, who are interested in things like:

• leaving your crappy job for work you love
• coming up with cheap, practical ways to be green
• playing board games
• reducing the amount of stuff you own
• making your own clothes
• getting completely free of debt

These kinds of things.

We’re working with people who saw movies like An Inconvenient Truth, Age of Stupid or Food Inc and thought “Things have got to change, and that starts with me.”

We want to provide encouragement and even inspiration — or at least amusing examples of noble failures, such as my sad attempts at making shampoo or learning how to cook.

So what are we doing?

Pilot projects

Thanks to a grant from Awards for All, we’re running 3 pilot projects in June and July:

• Bit Better Project

This project is all about living by the principle: ‘Leave it a little better than you find it’.  Going beyond Leave No Trace, we’ll work with farmers and local walkers to make the countryside through which they are travelling a ‘bit better’. It includes going out into the countryside with tools to make improvements to fences, waterlogged land, and other problems.

• Upcycle Your Clothing

Not just recycling or reusing clothes you would otherwise donate or bin, but ‘upcycling’ to create something new, beautiful and wearable. Includes gathering local natural materials from outdoors, such as shells, stones and fibrous plants. Hip sewing courses delivered by a young, local designer called Kirsteen Stewart. I just took her dressmaking class and it was brilliant. We’re thinking one of the courses we’ll offer will be a ‘Knockout Knickers’ class where we make our own gorgeous underwear. Yee haw!

• Kids Bushcraft

Hands-on sessions for kids in building shelters from heather, making fire safely, and navigating and walking outdoors via Treasure Hunts. This one is about rethinking what a ‘weed’ is and appreciate traditional skills and the natural environment.

Working with partners

We’re working with groups like 10:10 and Transition Towns to see which ideas of theirs can work for us and how we can help their movement too. If you’d like more information on either group and what we’re doing in Orkney with them, get in touch.

Planning an eco lodge and hostel

Our ultimate goal is to build an eco-lodge based on Skara Brae, Orkney’s Stone Age village and World Heritage site — a Scottish version of the Ice Hotel.  It will be a place where fellow tribespeople can gather to relax and stock up on energy and optimism that you need to keep forging your own path.

Time to take in the view

Finally, we also spend a lot of time looking out the window at the view you can see below and taking our cats for runs on the beach.

The view from our window.

Who are we, anyway?

In my case, I’m an American who came to Scotland on a holiday and met Malcolm, got engaged in two weeks, and chucked in my corporate job as a web producer in Washington DC.

I empathize with all those out there who haven’t the first clue how to cook a proper meal much less grow their own food, who never learned practical skills like how to mend a hole in your shirt or raise a plant without killing it, because that’s where I was when I first arrived in my new homeland. Happily, I’ve had a few years to figure some of that stuff out, and I’d like to share the resources I’ve found with others on a similar quest.

As for Malcolm, he teaches survival and outdoor skills, so UK folks can think of Ray Mears and not be far off, while US folks can think…Davey Crockett. Or maybe Daniel Boone. Malcolm grew up spending his summers in Wales and England in a house with no electricity or heating, so is perfectly at home — prefers it, in fact — with a few candles and a fire.

Yep, that's us

Malcolm’s the one who loves to tinker and be frugal, so comes up with simple DIY projects like putting cardboard on our windows at night to warm the house (works wonders) while I love good design and beautiful craft projects, and think to replace the cardboard with handmade felt so it looks pretty.

If you’re one of the tribe, join us and let’s make some more good things happen.

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