Encouraging communities to engage with local landscapes

A new web guide, Talking About Our Place, has been launched by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) to encourage communities to get involved in the future of their landscape.

‘Talking about Our Place’ provides online guidance and resources to assist communities, and the organisations working with them, to think about and discuss their local landscape. The toolkit supports the European Landscape Convention’s approach of encouraging wider community involvement in decisions affecting tomorrow’s landscapes.

The toolkit aims to assist communities to:

• Reflect on the ecosystem services provided by their local landscape, and identify the benefits they derive from their local landscape
• Understand the effect of landscape change on these benefits
• Better input to decisions affecting landscape change, particularly by local authorities and other agencies considering land use and planning decisions
• Organise their priorities in enhancing the place they live in, including advice on accessing support for future actions

The online guide assists organisers in planning and setting up their project, and suggests a range of activities that will help a community discuss what is important about their locality and the benefits their landscape provides. It can also help communities and their partners identify actions they can take to improve their place and provides guidance on how to do this.

It is hoped the toolkit will be useful in helping communities to develop projects and bid for funding from organisations including the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Climate Challenge Fund, as well as providing evidence for consideration in decisons to be made about local areas.

It is hoped that communities will share their experience of using the toolkit through case studies posted on the website.

For further information, please contact: Elli.Carlisle@snh.gov.uk

Further reading

• Talking About Our Place: guidance and resources available online and to download as pdf