Awards

LHSA Awards

One of the best ways to promote best practice, acknowledge great achievements, and encourage more endeavours in the field of Landscape Heritage is by the conferring of Awards on those who are already doing these things. Awards can be conferred on both places and people alike.

There are so many people performing fundamental good works in the landscape already, those working in grassroots education, pollution clean-ups, and the promotion of better environmental standards from work with litter, dumping, pollution, neighbourhood revival, community gardens, habitat conservation, landscape conservation, park and garden creation, that they need to be recognised and encouraged by Awards specifically created to acknowledge their contribution to our Landscape Heritage.

Today's landscape problems were inherited from yesterday's mistakes. Today's landscape messes are created by inherited cultural misconceptions. Tomorrow's new world has to start with fundamental changes to wrong thinking, wrong practice, cultural ignorance, cultural errors and a new way of sustainable living. Our Landscape Heritage is steadily being eroded at many levels, from the wrong disposal of our home waste, poor gardening practices, littering, dumping, poor municipal performance, inadequate municipal design for better landscapes, and poor provincial and national planning around the fundamentals of recognising Landscapes in their own right.

By creating a set of Awards beyond Blue Plaques and World Heritage Sites, our vital and fundamental Landscape Heritage can be better conserved and even created. Unlike structures which are gone once demolished, the Landscape is essentially a renewable resource that is evergreen or even eternal, with the potential to go on in perpetuity. They do so without causing environmental damage and harm but giving life and hope and beauty to everyone everywhere.

Awards have a great potential for glamour but are only the sparkling cherry on the cake of good work of our diligence to build that better world of Landscape Heritage for both now and tomorrow. The great possibility of encouraging better Heritage Landscapes, be they natural, cultural or designed/desirable, with our own highly prized Awards, starting at school level, needs to be given serious consideration.

For now, let me leave you with the thought: What is the aspect of my own Landscape Heritage that I prize the most? Is it the wide open spaces (will we always have them)? Is a mountain or river or beach (are we looking after them)? Is it my home garden, or school grounds, or a neighbourhood park (do we even have one and do we make the most of it)? Let us at LHSA be Landscape Heritage evangelists, sharing the good news of the Landscape and the beautiful world we should be living in.

Should you wish to sponsor a specific award or have an idea for an award that is especially important please contact us.