The Guild of St George
Formed in November 2024, the University has a multi-year partnership with the Guild of St George, custodians of Ruskin Land in the Wyre Forest.
The Guild of St George, founded in 1871 by the Victorian art and social critic John Ruskin (1819-1900), is a charity for arts, crafts and the rural economy. Ruskin established the Guild to make Britain a happier place to live in, to reconnect people to nature, and as a response to social and environmental exploitation.
It owns and manages Ruskin Land, a site in the Wyre Forest comprising farmland, orchards, over 100 acres of woodland, wildflower meadows and Arts and Crafts-style properties.
This partnership has been established to extend the Guild’s research collaborations and academic access to Ruskin Land, and to further the University’s strategic research objectives across transformational humanities, interdisciplinary collaborations, and practice-based creative fieldwork. The partnership will also provide the University with access to a further site for forest science research.
To date, academics from the Departments of Music and English Literature and the School of Biosciences have already engaged with Ruskin Land, exploring its unique blend of farmland, orchards, over 100 acres of woodland, wildflower meadows, and Arts and Crafts-style properties.
This partnership promises to enrich the University’s research, offering staff and students new avenues for collaboration and discovery in one of the Midlands’ most inspiring natural settings.
Ruskin Land: Literature in Forests
