Fifty years of Landscape Research Group

Abstract

The charity Landscape Research Group (LRG) was founded in 1967. This paper of record sets out some key points in the Group’s history, with a critical review of its achievements nationally and internationally in landscape research and an analysis of key issues for the future. It discusses the origins, objectives and approach of the Group. It then considers how the Group delivers its business, considering in turn the governance arrangements of the Executive Committee/Board and related matters such as structures and officers. The paper then addresses how well LRG has delivered its objectives of being a multi- and inter-disciplinary and an international organisation; advancing education, encouraging interest and exchanging information about landscape; and advancing landscape research. It considers key activities including Landscape Research, events, Landscape Research Extra, international activity, the website and e-communications, the Student Dissertation Prize Scheme, the ‘Nature-Experience Research Programme’ and the ‘People, Nature and Landscape Research Review’, Project HERCULES, and the LRG Research Strategy and its supporting grant scheme. The paper then considers various aspects of the Group’s resources. Finally it critically assesses LRG’s achievements, and discusses the issues it faces in the future.

Keywords:

• LRG
• Landscape Research
• LRG Research Strategy
• learned society
• charity governance
• knowledge exchange

Acknowledgements

David Coleman, Chris Dalglish, Peter Herring, Peter Howard, Anna Jorgensen, Laurence Le Du-Blayo, Gareth Roberts, Maggie Roe, Paul Selman, Carys Swanwick, Paul Tabbush and Bud Young for helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts and/or in discussion; Pauline Graham for collating data to underpin several of the analyses, and Moa Karolina Carlsson for collating information about the early events organised by the Group; Laurence Le Du-Blayo for permission to reproduce Figures 11 and 12 from her French accreditation to direct research (Le Du-Blayo, 2015); and Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group for permission to use data from their internal reports.

Notes

1. When the Group adopted its constitution in 1968, the office now known as ‘Chair’ was then termed ‘Chairman’; and when instituted in 1977, the office now known as ‘Vice-Chair’ was then termed ‘Vice-Chairman’. The Group adopted the terms ‘Chair’ and ‘Vice-Chair’ at its AGM in May 1993. The terms ‘Chair’ and ‘Vice-Chair’ are used throughout this paper, except in references to early documents.

2. The Group is clearly fortunate in having a very full archive of records. It seems that many, even large, institutions do not. For example in relation to the early history of the University of Sheffield’s Department of Landscape Architecture, Woudstra (2010, pp. 264–265) comments that

Thus useful archival information consists primarily of centrally collated minutes. … Unfortunately their survival appears to have been dependent on actions, or neglect, of the next [Vice Chancellor], without specific policies for systematic archiving. Remarkably little survives at the Department itself; within a world of large student numbers and pressing research requirements space always comes at a premium. Combined with the occasional move, both physically and organizationally, and changes in leadership, it is clear that archiving becomes a low priority.

In the case of the Group, its rich resource of records survives more as a result of happy accident, in the sense that records have been retained because there was no overt pressure to dispose of them. A learning point from preparing this paper was the need for LRG to have a more systematic approach, and a formal archiving policy has now been adopted.

3. Long-standing members of the Group Peter Howard, Paul Selman, Carys Swanwick and Bud Young have been generous with their comments and in checking the recollections of the author.

4. A reference in LRN 1(5), p. 10 (LRG, 1973a) states ‘since the Group’s foundation in 1966 the following [symposia and seminars] have been held …’, the first listed of which is the symposium on 3 May 1967. LRN 1(9), p. 1 (LRG, 1975a) also states ‘Founded in 1966 the Landscape Research Group…’.

5. Any individual (or body) desirous of supporting the Group is entitled to apply for membership at any time. Legal status as a private company limited by guarantee means that the Group after 1983 has a body of members who agree (‘guarantee’) to contribute £1.00 to its assets in the event that it is wound up and insolvent, and as such these individuals hold voting rights at the AGM. Those members who do not wish to meet this legal obligation are not entitled to vote at the AGM. Both categories of member pay the same annual membership subscription, and this entitles them to receive LR and LRE (Shuttleworth, 1983).

6. Corporate membership did then come into effect, and was carried through into the 1983 LRG Ltd Articles of Association. In practice, organisations have subscribed to the journal rather than becoming Group members.

7. An appreciation of the work of Alan Murray, and his wife Betty, in the founding years of the Group is given in LRN 1(12), p. 2 (LRG, 1976a).

8. The NFMT was set up in 1973 by the Group, following the untimely death of Nan Fairbrother, an LRG member and one of the eminent landscape architects and thinkers of the time. The intention was that the NFMT would be independent of the Group once established, except insofar as the Group appointed its three trustees (one each nominated by the Group, the Landscape Institute and the Fairbrother family) (LRG, 1973b, 1974).

By 1976 NFMT had awarded its first prizes for a landscape design competition (LRG, 1975c, 1976b). However, after that initial effort, the NFMT trustees were not as successful as had been anticipated in raising funds, and so gradually became inactive (LRG, 1981d).

Over several years in the late-1980s to the late-1990s the Board encouraged the NFMT trustees to take up their role more actively or to resign so that it could make new appointments but without success, so it then encouraged them—if they were of the view that the Trust would never effectively achieve its objectives—to wind up the Trust (LRG Ltd, 1990b, 1990c, 1993). The trustees decided in late 1993 to do so, and to transfer the NFMT’s assets to LRG as the charitable body with the most appropriately related objectives most likely to achieve the NFMT’s general purposes (LRG Ltd, 1993, 1994a). However, they then took no action, and it fell to the Group working with the Charity Commission (who were by then seriously concerned about the Trust’s lack of activity) to complete the winding up and transfer of assets (LRG Ltd, 1995c, 1996b). The winding up was completed in late 1998 (LRG Ltd, 1998a, 1998b, 1999).

9. The HERCULES project was supported by the EC's Seventh Framework Programme under Grant Agreement No. 603447.

10. The Board agreed a set of financial principles in 2006 to manage the Group’s business (LRG Ltd, 2006b). These were:

• The Group will aim to maintain a level of annual ‘core income’ (from member subscriptions and journal revenue) sufficient to cover the full costs of ‘core expenditure’ (i.e. publishing Landscape Research and meeting the operational running costs of governing, managing and administering LRG);

• The accumulated fund should be maintained at a level sufficient to cope with a radical but possible change in the Group’s fortunes, i.e. to provide a ‘safety margin’ that is proportionate to the risks of such change. The main risk identified was the need to make new production arrangements for LR, but this was assessed as low risk. … The Group will therefore seek to maintain a reserve broadly at present levels [c.£60,000] to enable it to maintain activity in the event of change, but will not actively seek to increase the reserve.

• The Board will aim, so far as possible, to ensure break-even, except by deliberate decision when either ‘invest to save’ expenditure or the need to increase the reserve to meet some future contingency has been agreed;

• The Board will therefore use any surplus of income above the level of ‘core expenditure’ to expand other aspects of the Group’s activity;

• The Board will aim to increase subscription rates little and often (every two to three years), to finance increases in future activity as well as to reflect any extra direct benefits to members; and

• To achieve these objectives, the Board will adopt a more proactive form of financial management where different areas of expenditure operate within agreed budgets, set in the context of agreed objectives and an expected level of income.

11. See Note 10 above.