The professional field Sustainable Management of Cultural Landscape (SUMCULA) Problem scope Cultural landscapes can be understood in many perspectives such as The agricultural landscape, The industrial landscape, The urban cityscape, The coastal maritime landscape, …and even more denominations are possible for example Foodscape, Soundscape, etc. What they share is the material and intangible consequences of man’s interaction with the landscape in a broad variety of different areas and contents. The issues motivating this strategic partnership build on the experiences and competences of the partners and rests in a number of issues such as: - how to organize the numerous stakeholders in landscape questions into a sustainable governance structures; - how to develop models for identifying, describing and interpreting material and intangible properties of the landscape; - how to develop strategies for valuation, preservation, development; and - how to develop local economies and sustainable tourism building on identified qualities and properties of the landscape. The objective of this partnership is through a number of case studies approach these issues as inroads to development of courses and didactic resources to be used on master’s level. The members of the partnership cover a wide range of competences: 1. University of Gothenburg, Sweden, Coordinating institution: built cultural heritage, industrial landscapes, floating heritage, iclimate change, geomorphology, bio-diversity, remote sensing and GIS 2. University of Pécs, Hungary: cultural heritage studies, regional development, strategic planning, adult education, floating heritage of rivers and lakes, viticultural landscapes, economy of regional planning, environmental law 3. University of Pannonia, Veszprém, Hungary: regional development of disadvantaged regions, sustainable agriculture, agro-economy, bio-energy production, tourism; viticulture, remote sensing & GIS 4. Lake Balaton Development Coordination Agency (LBDCA), Siófok, Hungary: regional infrastructure planning, management of nature reserves and national parks, lake-management (shallow lakes), cultural heritage of rural areas 5. European Ecocycles Society (ECyS): sustainable ecological cycles, environmental management, international networking and publishing in the journal ECOCYCLES (ISSN 2416-2140; DOI prefix 10.19040 [Cross Ref]). 6. University of Palermo (UNIPA), Palermo, Italy: general soil science and soil conservation, water resources management in arid environments, environmental protection, waste management, viticulture and conservation of viticultutal landscapes, remote sensing and GIS 7. Ecole des Métiers de l'Environnement (EME), Bruz, France: environmental technologies, environmental chemistry, remediation of polluted landscapes, renewable energy technologies, flu gas cleaning, biogas production waste management 8. Mendel University (MENDELU), Brno, Czech Republic. Core competences: forestry, forest ecosystems, conservation of forest landscapes, landscape dynamics, environmental protection, environmental health and epidemiology 9. GAIA Education, Findhorn, Scotland, UK : ecovillage design and education in the design of ecological settlements, waste management and implementation of zero waste policies, environmental sociology, adult education, lifelong learning. 10. Slovak Agricultural University (SPU), Nitra, Slovakia: agriculture, food safety, bio-energy, environmental law, regional development 11. University College of Tourism and Ecology (WSTiE), Sucha Beskidzka, Poland: sustainable tourism, tourism-informatics, eco-tourism 12. Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain: viticulture and enology, environmental science, cultural heritage 13. University of Applied Sciences (HTW), Dresden, Germany: environmental science, urban agriculture, landscape architecture Activities to be covered: This follows the general rules for applying within Erasmus+ Key Action 2: Cooperation for Innovation and the Exchange of Good Practices, specifically focusing strategic partnership. Activities: 1. Case studies of cultural landscape management 2. Curriculum development: new master courses 3. Workshops, conferences and Intensive Programmes 4. Scientific publications regarding new methods of education 5. Establishing an international knowledge-bank through active networking Expected outcomes: Increased cooperation on primarily master’s level among partner universities that will facilitate staff and student mobility, but also with development of didactic resources to increase the availability of courses for students throughout Europe. Development of further education courses for professionals Integrating good management practices in education of landscape studies
The key goal of the project is to improve the societal ability to operate stewardship, management and sustainable development of cultural landscapes, by establishing a joint framework for master’s education and training of professional managers for conservation of cultural landscapes and regional development. The present educational situation does not sufficiently meet the need for integrating different core subjects such as natural conservation, cultural conservation, urban and land-use planning, to name a few. A classical definition of ‘cultural landscape’ is a landscape fashioned from a natural landscape by a culture group. Culture is the agent, the natural area the medium, the cultural landscape the result. Following the European Landscape Convention formulated in 2000, ‘landscape’ means an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors and covers: - natural, rural, urban and peri-urban areas. It includes: - land, inland water and marine areas. It concerns: - outstanding as well as everyday or degraded landscapes. This project is theoretically contextualised following the classical definition, and has its problem formulation and application orientation guided by the ELC. The project is thus interdisciplinary in character combining conservation of cultural assets and natural resources into one holistic system where preservation, remediation and sustainable development are integrated. The objectives are: • to formulate a master’s structure for interdisciplinary education based on a number of jointly shared premises, • to perform case studies covering the full extent of the interdisciplinary range of the master’s structure, and edit all case studies into a digital didactic resource for both education and professional practice. • to develop an Internet-based land-use decision support system, for both education and professional practice. • to establish an Internet-based platform providing open access to the didactic and practice oriented resources developed in the project. The broad overarching intent is not only to reach achievements and results ending this project, but rather achieve long-lasting activity with this project as the initial phase. The members of the partnership are: European Ecocycles Society (ECyS), Hungary Gaia Education, Findhorn Scotland, UK Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Georgikon Campus, Hungary Institut Polytechnique Unilasalle, École de Metiers L'environnement, Bruz, France Lake Balaton Development Coordination Agency (LBDCA), Siófok, Hungary Mendel University, Brno, Czech Republic Slovak Agricultural University, Nitra, Slovakia University College of Tourism and Ecology (WSTiE), Sucha Beskidzka, Poland University of Applied Sciences Dresden, Germany University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden (coordinating institution) University of Palermo, Italy University of Pécs, Hungary Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain For the different contributions by the partners, see scetion 5. The driving activity of the project has been around 100 case studies on diverse aspects of integrated approaches to landscapes and their sustainable development. The formulation and operation of the cases has also resulted in a number of organisations established as de facto associated partners. A principal structure of subjects to be covered on master’ studies level has been formulated as the agreed base for development of the master’s structure among the partners. Initially a fully developed master’s program will be launched by the University of Palermo with the support of the project partners through contribution of lectures but also courses as electable resources to the Palermo program. The SUMCULA-project is in principle based on a former Erasmus+ project that resulted in The European Ecocycles Society (EES). For the continuation, the SUMCULA-project will be integrated within the framework of EES and be made publically available through the Internet-site of EES. Thereby availability will be provided to the master’s activities in terms of program and courses, the knowledge bank that represents a dynamic anthology of case studies and editorial texts, and the software for land-use decision support. Through EES all case studies has been or will be openly accessible through the journal Ecocycles. The long-term benefits of the project aims at establishing a creative meeting place between the academia and the practice field where heritage perspectives – whether natural or cultural – are regarded as assets and necessities to reach a sustainable development of all kinds of landscapes. This will be achieved through expanding the SUMCULA activities through the EES network to include new organisations, institutions, and activities on different societal levels, into cooperation in education, in research, and in professional practices.