Whose Landscapes?

Second symposium – Whose Landscapes? 30/3/21

One of the major advantages of a biographical/narrative approach is the potential it offers to open up our understanding of landscape to a wider range of voices. A particular focus of concern in the UK context is the ways in which landscapes, especially rural landscapes, can be constructed as ‘white spaces’ that exclude ethnic minorities (Neal and Agyeman, 2006), an issue recently highlighted by MK Gallery’s ‘The Lie of the Land’ exhibition and Beth Collier’s ‘Wild in the City’ initiative. Class exclusion is a major and enduring structural feature of, especially, rural English landscapes, as the National Trust’s ‘People’s Landscapes’ initiative recognizes.

Click on the links below, download and open the file to view presentations from this symposium. These presentations have been posted with kind permission from the speakers.

The disruptive politics of Brexit: rural communities, dependency and migration

Professor Sarah Neal, University of Sheffield

Anti-blackness and the racialization of the British rural countryside space – how racial prejudice and place are intertwined yet contested

Maxwell Ayamba, Sheffield Environmental Movement

‘White and pleasant land?’ Racism and exclusion in the English countryside, 1948 – 2020

Lottie Jacob, University of Reading

Progression, extension, development, and the origins of The MERL

Dr Ollie Douglas, The Museum of English Rural Life

Green Unpleasant Land: English Rurality and Empire

Professor Corinne Fowler, University of Leicester

The problem with the preservationists: conflicts of class and amenity in the ‘industrial Pennines’

Dr Katrina Navickas, University of Hertfordshire

Footpaths, heritage, and limitations on popular access to land

Professor Paul Readman, King’s College, London