Terry O’Regan takes a break from the dance floor to report on the 21st National Landscape Forum
Those of you who have turned 40, 50 or even 60 years will have attended a few weddings and as the celebrations turn to overly loud music and songs that you might have danced to a generation ago, the anaesthetic effect of too much alcohol might tempt you take to the dance floor and imagine you are graceful and sexy all over again. If the event has been recorded on video or smartphone you would be well advised to plead that you have an urgent appointment rather than witness your ‘oldest rocker in town’ senior moment.
A version of such a senior moment hovered at the back of my mind last year when I decided to convene the National Landscape Forum in the National Botanic Gardens. Had my
time as a landscape rocker passed me by? Could I inject the required energy and commitment into the process? I passed the test last year and the forum not only survived, it demonstrated that all generations share an enthusiasm for good landscapes and good governance.
A few days ahead of this year’s National Landscape Forum on 9 and 10 June in University College Cork, Michael Viney accorded me the nom de plume of ‘veteran campaigner’. I am a shade more comfortable with that than with ‘the oldest landscape rocker in town’.
This year’s forum marked a coming of age for the interactive event as it is 21 years since I convened the first such forum in June 1995. This significant turning point was marked by a new maturity in the structure of the forum and a partnership with the Centre for Planning, Education & Research in UCC.
The two-day programme featured a morning of workshops when cross-generational, cross-disciplinary and even cross-cultural groups of people engaged enthusiastically and critically with the framework of landscape management in Ireland. Was it a morning of knocking and begrudgery? Not at all! Yes, there was sharp criticism, but credit was given for the achievements of our practitioners and public servants and there were many proactive suggestions and recommendations, all of which were presented at the plenary session the following day. Study tours through the older parts of the city centre and the extensive environs of Cork Harbour provided rich subject matter for discussion and debate and some landscape assessment exercises.
Friday brought the more established forum fare of short intense presentations and really challenging discussions drawing on the presentations and the workshop reports. There appeared to be a consensus that landscape was still an afterthought with most projects, introduced to the design process when it could have little impact on the fundamental landscape blunders of other disciplines and no disciplines. There was agreement that training and education needed to be extensively undertaken across all relevant disciplines.
“There appeared to be a consensus that landscape was still an afterthought with most projects”
Once again, the old bones of contention (the still-draft 2001 Landscape Guidelines) were chewed over and spat out. I suggested in response to this reflux-inducing exercise that it
was time that we the people produced alternative guidelines as a proactive confrontational initiative. This suggestion was well received and may progress further.
But listening to the final stages of the forum discussions, a war plan began to simmer in the soup of my declining grey cells. Could it be the case that landscape would never break into the big time? Could it be that it would never realise the vision at the heart of the European Landscape Convention? Could it be that in time honoured Irish ‘hurler on the ditch’ fashion we would crib away year after year until even we lost interest in landscape?
I realised that no matter how good the landscape forum became it would never draw the landscape deniers to its gatherings. So when the uninformed masses won’t go to the landscape mountain, the landscape mountain must be brought to them.
My provisional big picture thinking for next year is that the 2017 forum should be identified as the Year of Ireland’s Landscape, with June designated Ireland’s 2017 ‘Month of Landscape’ – book-ended by Bloom at the beginning of the month and the Landscape Forum at the end and filled with other landscape related. events and projects.
What I have in mind with the Year of Ireland’s Landscape would be to encourage organisations representing planners, engineers, architects, farmers, hill farmers wind farm developers, utility companies, hillwalkers, environmentalists and more besides to have designated sessions on the landscape at their annual events as envisioned by the European Landscape Convention and the National Landscape Strategy.
For all of this, we need to identify a panel of speakers, a representative steering group, a management team and funding. It would not require a very large budget or indeed a very large team, but LAI certainly could not do it alone.
But once and for all such an approach across the board might fix the concept of landscape in the wider society mindset, and set the scene for a balanced respected integration of landscape into all decisions and projects into the future.
Hopefully, that day will dawn before you see a gravestone bearing the words ‘Here lies the Oldest Landscape Rocker in Ireland’! ✽
 Terry O’Regan B Agr Sc Hort (hons), FILI, MIoH, founder of Landscape Alliance Ireland, has served the landscape industry in Ireland for some 45 years and advanced the intent and aims of the European Landscape Convention for some 20 years; he now divides his time between providing landscape consultancy services in Munster and working as a Council of Europe international landscape and heritage expert in Kosovo. He continues to promote and refine his jargon-free landscape circle methodology and is currently leading a pilot study on its use at local and regional administrative levels in Kosovo. The LAI website will shortly be re-launched as www.lai-ireland.com. Contact Terry at terryjoregan@gmail.com or 021-487 1460. |
