Defra is facilitating two UK wide events in 2010 - the running of a UK Landscape Award to select the UK entry to the ELC Award of the Council of Europe, and the organisation of a UK ELC Landscape Conference (8th - 10th November 2010). The Scottish Government (i.e. Rural and Environment Directorate and Historic Scotland) together with SNH have provided funding to both these initiatives, and are contributing to both UK steering groups overseeing their implementation. The other devolved administrations and their agencies are also making contributions.
The Conference
The Conference will be a high profile event for those with an interest in the protection, management and enhancement of all landscapes: in town, country or coast, it will showcase and celebrate recent landscape thinking and could help you in your work to influence change between people and place. The aim of the event is to demonstrate the UK's engagement with the principles of the ELC, celebrate our landscaping achievements and identify challenges ahead. Participants should leave feeling inspired and with new contacts in their pocket from a wide range of disciplines. Contributors will include landscape practitioners and academics from the UK and beyond and the conference will be heavily case study led.
The Award
The Award is designed to show the benefits a good landscape brings to communities. It is a great opportunity to highlight landscapes across the UK, to talk about landscape and to engage the public and practitioners in debates about what makes a great landscape. It will also show how a good landscape is just as likely to be in the centre of a city or in the suburbs as in the heart of the countryside.
The Award winner will be a 'landscape for Europe': a scheme so good that it has the potential to win the European Landscape Award in 2011. For local and regional authorities, this is a rare chance to promote landscape management and protection; and for tourism and marketing groups, it's a great opportunity to promote the destination to new audiences. With heats in Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and the nine English regions, the chances for local as well as national publicity are good.
Entry criteria and other details can be found on the website.
The Convention
Each landscape is a blend of territories, social perceptions and changing natural, social and economic forces, which has developed through natural forces and the actions of human beings. The European Landscape Convention - also known as the Florence Convention - promotes the protection, management and planning of European landscapes and organises European co-operation on landscape issues. The Convention encourages the public to take an active part in their:
- Protection: conserving and maintaining heritage value,
- Management: helping to steer necessary changes, and
- Planning: particularly for those areas most radically affected by change.