Seminar Landscape Education for Democracy 2017

image: Deni Ruggeri

Are you a planning or design student interested in learning how to create more inclusive, open and democratic landscapes?

Then participate in the LED Program – an exciting way to earn credits and strengthen important professional skills.

The next learning activities will start in March 2017. Registration will open in the beginning of 2017.

Introduction

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 practioners 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 5 European landscape architecture faculties and the LE:NOTRE Institute is to promote awareness and empower young design and planning professional to become more active in shaping democratic change. The project employs interdisciplinary, problem-based learning environments and curricular innovation to introduce landscape and democracy as a cross-disciplinary subject. 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 first LED course starts this spring featuring a 12 online course sessions available to students at any institution, as well as a two-week summer on-site intensive programme available only to students at partner universities.

• Project Presentation (PPT)

Course schedule and content for 2017

Online seminar: March-May

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:

• Landscape and democracy
• Participation theories and practices
• Community and identity
• The design process
• Communication and representation

For further details please visit the seminar schedule.

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 active or passive mode.

• Active 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

• Passive participation includes:
  • visitation of online seminar sessions either in real time or through video recordings;
  • no academic recognition granted

About the partnership

Grant holder and coordinator

• NMBU, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Department of Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning

Project partners

• Nürtingen-Geislingen University, Nürtingen, Germany
• University of Kassel School of Architecture, Urban and Landscape Planning, Kassel, Germany
• Szent István University, Faculty of Landscape Architecture, Budapest, Hungary
• University of Bologna, Department of Architecture, Italy
• LE:NOTRE Institute, an international foundation based in Wageningen, Netherlands.

ERASMUS+ Strategic Partnership Programme

The LED - Landscape Education for Democracy Project has been (partially) funded by the ERASMUS+ grant program of the European Union under grant no.2015-1-NO01-KA203-013239 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.