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During my PhD-research I have walked with a lot of people around place I barely knew myself. Every walk was a new adventure, an expedition and about discovering the place through the eyes of my companion. Realizing how different people see and read the landscape through different lenses helped me to understand how important finding a ‘common language’ is. This ‘common language’ is necessary to be able to talk about and debate landscape, its past, present and future with people from different backgrounds, with different professions or with different opinions.
Now, I am working as a director of the ‘Regionaal Landschap Westhoek vzw’, a non-profit organisation that aims to build on and manage the landscapes of our region in or to enhance both its natural and cultural qualities. The organisation operates as a partnership between local governments, landowners, farmers, nature conservations, touristic organisation and other stakeholders to create sustainable and inclusive landscape management practices. And when I started working here in 2021, I could only conclude that the different stakeholders had no ‘common language’ when it came down to the question: ‘What could be a sustainable future for the landscapes of our region?’.
Three years onwards we are now, slowly, building and raising awareness on the idea that there are different lenses to look at the landscape and there is a need to understand each other’s lens to move on and to be able discuss landscape related issues. Taking on the European Landscape Convention’s workflow of first identifying landscapes, then assessing them, to then finally manage them and monitor the changes within them, we have set up a LEADER-project called ‘Venters op het landschap’ (‘Windows towards the landscape’). Within the project we are setting up workshops, an educational programme and interactive installations to foster a shared understanding and appreciation of the landscape and to identify its different characteristics seen through different windows (or lenses). With projects like Vensters op het Landschap, we want to enhance our stakeholders’ strategies on landscape management and turn this into an active discussion between them with the ‘common language’ or common understanding of our landscape as a base. Emphasizing the dynamic and multifaceted nature of landscapes, and incorporating these perspectives into planning processes, ensures that landscape management is both inclusive and reflective of the communities it serves. We will then built on these foundations to try and reconnect people with their landscapes by having them talk to each other and engage the local communities in shaping and maintaining the landscape themselves in sustainable manners.
We desperately need to steer away from the polarizing discussions and practices on landscape and our environment we are having today, we need to work together by understandings each other and by understanding we all work, live, recreate,…in the same landscapes and we are all creating the landscapes we deserve.
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