The Cultural Landscapes and Legacy Committee Terms of Reference is Approved by the CSLA Board
If you are interested in volunteering to participate in developing the strategies, below, please contact Michelle Legault, Executive Director, at executive-director@csla-aapc.ca
At its March, 2021, meeting, the CSLA Board adopted the Terms of Reference for the Cultural Landscapes and Legacy Committee.
The objectives of the committee are to:
1. Refine the mandate and scope of the Committee, including exploring the focus of the committee with an emphasis on the profession and its role in all categories of cultural landscapes.
2. Build awareness about the importance of legacy to the profession, including exploring options for funded research approaches for worthy sites and projects, in collaboration with LACF and the Gunter Schoch bursary or other, exploring how we incentivize research in cultural landscapes, finding opportunities to celebrate cultural landscapes, and reviewing / re-designing the Legacy Project Award.
3. Establish a national database of landscape assets, identifying those cultural landscapes and landscape architects that merit celebration, including creating a database of cultural landscapes à la Awards Atlas.
4. Provide research resources and build awareness within the profession and the broader community, including fostering awareness about the contributions of landscape architects to cultural landscapes (and their role in the cause), creating guides, tools and making resources available to the public and to members, building best practices and establishing conservation guidelines, such as developing standards for the Canadian Landscape Standard on conservation, and protection, adopting standard definitions and guidelines to address cultural landscapes, including for addressing Indigenous sites and sites which demonstrate Canada’s diversity, with a reference to ICOMOS and other international bodies and preparing relevant white paper.
5. Employ tools to advocate for threatened cultural landscapes on a national basis through political engagement and public awareness, including liaising with heritage organizations and government agencies, such as ICOMOS Canada, the National Trust, the Indigenous Heritage Circle, the Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals, and/or the Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation, creating position papers and other advocacy tools that speak to the issue of threatened cultural landscapes (whether from development, climate change, or other factors), addressing matters of cultural landscapes in the CSLA’s yearly brief to the Standing Committee on Finance, providing input on issues reviewed by the Standing Committee on Heritage
6. Showcase, through various means, landscapes of cultural interest from across the country and/or bodies of work to a broader public and professional audience, including making available information on the role of landscape architects in regard to the cultural landscapes, building awareness via universities and students, perhaps in collaboration with LAAC, or via a standard lecture which is provided to schools, community groups or related associations.