In parallel to the Careggi Seminars organised in Florence since 2010, UNISCAPE – the EUROPEAN NETWORK of  UNIVERSITIES for the IMPLEMENTATION of the EUROPEAN LANDSCAPE CONVENTION - launches a new series of seminars, called “UNISCAPE En-Route”.

As its name implies the UNISCAPE En Route seminar series intends to be on the move, in order to confront landscape issues of European relevance to specific physical landscapes, and to create opportunities for dialogue between a European-wide academic community and local landscape actors.

 Following the recommendations of the European Landscape Convention, the aim is therefore twofold.

1) Travelling from one UNISCAPE institution to the next, the seminars will offer the opportunity to confront academic research and project thinking to the landscape reality of the anchor site of each institution. The UNISCAPE community and the other participants involved in promoting the European Landscape
Convention are invited to discuss thematically related landscape research with a European scope to the questions raised by a specific site, and translate theoretical approaches into a site-specific, project-driven research approach. The seminars will thus be the occasion for participants for in-depth exchange on common issues of significance for European landscapes, and thus promote “mutual assistance and exchange of information” (Chapter III-Article 8).

2) The seminars are meant as a tool to promote the European Landscape Convention by addressing both a European-wide academic community and local stakeholders and decision makers (institutions, politicians, inhabitants, social and economic actors). This will give the opportunity for local landscape actors to open up the questions they are facing at home to a wider European context, and for academics to present their research to a new audience within a specific landscape context. Thus, by reaching out towards local landscape actors and combining the more academic activities with other thematically related events (site visits, film, exhibits, etc.), the seminars will offer a concrete opportunity for “awareness-raising“ (Chapter II-Article 6).
 

As a series of seminars traveling across Europe, the aim of the UNISCAPE En-Route seminars is to help build over time a common knowledge and understanding among UNISCAPE network members and thus strengthen the network in its actions both at local and at the European level. By addressing both types of audiences – members of UNISCAPE and other academic participants on the one hand, local stakeholders and decision makers on the other – they hope to be the seed for new landscape-based local dynamics. Each seminar is an opportunity to reflect on the values, issues and modes of intervention specific to the present state of the landscape-types present in the “anchor site” of the host institution and project their future. It intends to be an incubator of knowledge in reference to a given concrete landscape, where the sharing of experiences helps to stimulate new or existing initiatives that promote innovative thinking about landscape dynamics both locally and globally.

 

The papers and discussions taking place during the seminar will be published in:
UNISCAPE En-Route: I Quaderni , UNISCAPE's online publication series.

This series is part of I Quaderni di Careggi, UNISCAPE's online publication ISSN 2281-3195.

In order to facilitate the dialogue with the local actors, the seminar will be in the local language and English. Translation will be provided.