Seminar Landscape Education for Democracy 2021

{{#evu:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1FlOjd1bG8&feature=youtu.be |alignment=right |dimensions=500 |description= You want to learn more about the LED programme? Please have a look at the video documentation of our online seminar and intensive study programme 2016. }} Are you a planning or design student interested in learning how to create more inclusive, open and democratic landscapes?

• This page documents the LED Online Seminar conducted from April - July 2021
• For any further information please email us under info(at)led-project.org

• The 2021 LED2LEAP Course has partnered with the Learning Landscapes ERASMUS Group.

Collaborating for Landscape Democracy

The landscape belongs to everyone. We should all have equal access to it and a voice in how it is used, valued and maintained. However, spatial planning education rarely includes considerations of democratic processes, participatory planning, community design and landscape stewardship. Furthermore, it does not fully prepare young practitioners to become leaders in promoting democratic landscape change and work effectively in partnership with communities.

The idea behind the LED (Landscape Education for Democracy) project, a partnership between 4 European landscape architecture faculties, two local NGOs and the LE:NOTRE Institute is to promote awareness and empower young design and planning professionals to become more active in shaping democratic change. Our goal is to fill a gap in design and planning education and give students the opportunity to confront themselves with pressing issues of landscape democracy, right to the landscape and participation.

The LED course 2021 included 13 online course sessions available to students at any institution.

LED2LEAP Working Groups 2021

Our 2021 teams worked in different living labs across Europe over the summer term 2021. The locations are: Budapest (HU), Bologna (IT), Nürtingen (DE), Uppsala (Sweden), Zagreb (HR), Gdansk (PL) as well as Bratislava and Nitra in Slovakia.

What is this programme about and what is in it for you?

LED2LEAP stands for Landscape Education for Democracy: Towards Leadership, Empowerment, Agency and Partnership. Our programme is an endeavor to bring democratic principles into the range of disciplines that collaborate on landscape focused projects, providing the opportunity for this transformative approach to spread to all levels of society, resulting in more resilient, sustainable and democratic communities and landscapes.

Course Elements

LED2LEAP has three arms which reach out to engage communities involved in the project.

• Online Seminar: a semester-long international program for students and professionals that uses a digital platform to teach theories behind Landscape Democracy and hear from practitioners.
• Intensive Programme: A 10-day program where seminar participants travel to an international site to practice the values and apply the tools they’ve studied, by addressing a landscape democracy challenge.
• Living Labs An ongoing program that allows students to concurrently explore with the Participatory Action Research, Visioning and Co-Design approaches they’ve learned in the Online Seminar, and feedback their results.

Course schedule and content for 2021

Online seminar: March - July 2021

The online module consists of twelve 90-minute sessions of lectures, reading materials, collaborative group work, concept mapping, storyboarding and other diverse active and passive learning tools.

Themes covered in the course are:

• Democratic Landscape Transformation
• Democratic Landscape Analysis
• Collaborative Visioning and Goal Setting
• Collaborative Design
• Evaluation and Future Agenda Setting

• More details on the schedule will be published soon.

Conditions for participation and credits

Participation in the online seminar is free and open to students at any institution as well as the general public.

There are no registration fees. Participation is possible in two modes.

Full participation includes:

• regular attendance of the online class (or working with the seminar recordings in due time)
• completion of the seminar coursework and group assignments
• academic recognition of up to 5 ECTS

Following includes:

• visitation of online seminar sessions either in real time or through video recordings;
• possibility to do a final assessment

Further information

• please contact info(at)led-project.org
• Find us on Facebook

Project history

The Landscape Democracy teaching group exists since 2015. See below some impressions of our activites so far:

LED in action - some impressions from previous online seminars

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  Understanding landscapes from a human perspective: participants share their local landscape symbols

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  Participants draw and discuss landscape selfie-sketches

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  What motivates planners and designners for participation? Role playing landscape democracy personalities

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  Participants discuss their local landscape democracy challenges

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  Sharing and discussing the insights from the LED online seminar

Information material and LED resources

Our information materials for the upcoming 2021 course are currently being updated.

You can access LED lecture resources via this link:

• LED 2021 Materials and Recordings (open access)
• LED 2020 Materials and Recordings (open access)
• LED 2019 Materials and Recordings (open access)
• LED 2018 Materials and Recordings (open access)
• LED 2017 Materials and Recordings (open access)
• LED 2016 Materials and Recordings (open access)
• LED reading list

Please visit the documentations of our previous online courses for further information:

• LED2LEAP Seminar 2020
• LED Seminar 2019
• LED Seminar 2018
• LED Seminar 2017
• LED Seminar 2016

For further information on the previous intensive study programmes please visit the following pages:

• LED Workshop Törökbálint,Hungary, 2018
• LED Workshop Kassel, Germany, 2017
• LED Workshop Zingonia, Italy, 2016

LED Publications 'Partnering for Landscape Democracy':

• LED Process Report: Landscape Education for Democracy Co-creating a socially-engaged landscape planning and design education for sustainable development, download LED Process Report: Landscape Education for Democracy
• Zingonia - Partnering for Landscape Democracy
• Kassel - Partnering for Landscape Democracy
• Törökbálint - Partnering for Landscape Democracy(all free download)

LED in action - some impressions from the Kassel workshop 2017

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  Meeting the local stakeholders in the Kassel Nordstadt community centre

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  Meeting the photo group of Kassel Nordstadt

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  Understanding the community's landscape with photo voice

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  Preparing for the visioning chairs method

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  Meeting the community in the local mosque

Our partnership

Seminar partners

• LE:NOTRE Institute (coordinator), an international foundation based in Wageningen, Netherlands.
• Nürtingen-Geislingen University, Nürtingen, Germany
• Hungarian University of Agriculture & Life Sciences, Faculty of Landscape Architecture, Budapest, Hungary
• KulturActiv, NGO, Budapest, Hungary
• University of Bologna, Department of Architecture, Italy
• ETABETA, NGO, Bologna, Italy
• SLU, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden

ERASMUS+ Strategic Partnership Programme

The LED2LEAP Project has been (partially) funded by the ERASMUS+ grant program of the European Union under grant no.2019‐1‐NL01‐KA203‐060497. Neither the European Commission nor the project's national funding agency are responsible for the content or liable for any losses or damage resulting of the use of these resources.