Every Tree Tells a Story: Creative Placemaking and Urban Forestry in Glasgow

The partnership brings together three city-centre universities, Glasgow City Council, schools, active and outdoor educators, artists, performers and designers.

More than 40 engagements have taken place in squares, parks, schools and university campuses. Around 400 postcards have been collected and shared through exhibitions, videos and digital albums. The project also produces policy briefs, teaching resources and peer-reviewed research.

Every Tree Tells a Story uses community participation - mainly postcard-based engagement - to map trees and record the stories people connect with them. Its objective is to shape better-rooted places, policies, education and planting.

The project collects, records, analyses and shares tree stories from Glasgow’s citizens. These stories inform city policy and education while expressing people’s relationships with the urban forest.

Glasgow City Council, University of Strathclyde and ESRC Impact Acceleration Account

• A deeper understanding of how trees shape urban well-being, activity, identity and value creation.
• Strong, multi-faceted connections with nature through creative meaning-making and participation.
• Evidence and stories that can influence nature-positive policy, urban forestry and place decisions.
• Innovative learning in schools and universities, including ecological citizenship, entrepreneurship, urban planning and reading treescapes.
• Long-term relationships across public, academic, education and creative partners.

The project demonstrates how qualitative, arts-based evidence can complement technical urban-forestry data. It creates a route for lived experience, attachment, memory and well-being to inform tree stewardship and policy.

NbS goals and benefits

• Enhancing sustainable urbanisation and urban regeneration through nature-based engagement.
• Developing urban-woodland approaches to climate adaptation and stewardship.
• Recentring human well-being through meaningful connections with urban nature.
• Mainstreaming tree-centred, nature-positive education, engagement and training.

• Low-barrier creative methods can reach people who may not participate in formal consultation.
• Stories are evidence, but they need transparent methods for collection, analysis, consent and interpretation.
• Creative partners and educators can translate NbS into forms that people understand and care about.
• Sustained relationships matter more than one-off engagement events.

In kind resourcing: Glasgow School of Art, Thrive Outdoors and Glasgow Caledonian University, alongside schools, educators and a creative collective

Sarah Dodd, University of Strathclyde - sarah.dodd@strath.ac.uk