Lancaster University: Future Places Centre invites public to look ahead and Reimagine Landscapes

A major conference which brings together a diverse range of voices, including the public, to help reimagine relationships with the landscape during times of unprecedented change will be held at Lancaster University.

The forthcoming Future Places Centre Reimagining Landscapes conference will take place on July 7 and 8.

The conference includes speakers such as environmental journalist Fred Pearce, artist Rebecca Chesney, ecologists, conservationists, writers, land managers, farmers, film-makers and poets.

The conference also includes a world premiere performance of Flight by musicians from Propeller Orchestra in a collaboration with naturalist and author Mark Cocker.

This evening of conversation and music, presented in a partnership between Lancaster Arts and The Future Places Centre, will explore connections between birds, soundscape ecology and people.

Six panels over two days will engage with topics including coastal communities and sea level rise, the cultural landscape in the Anthropocene, light, species mapping and restoration, landscape access, arts access, writing in the North of England and more.

“The Reimagining Landscape conference is called to help us reconfigure our relationships with the natural world,” says one of the organisers and University lecturer Dr Karen Lloyd, the Writer in Residence at Lancaster University’s Future Places Centre.

“At this time of unprecedented change, our keynote speakers and panel discussions will open dialogue towards new ways in which literature and the arts can disseminate environmental issues and foster engagement amongst the wider community.”