FOLAR
Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading

Past Talks

Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading

Past Talks

Almost from the outset FOLAR has - with generous permission from our speakers - recorded virtually all the talks we have held at symposia and online.There are currently over 130 recordings available under Past Talks and Specials. The Past Talks section covers topics ranging from the Festival Pleasure Gardens at Battersea Park, Susan Jellicoe’s photographs, The Open Spaces Society, working on Byker in Newcastle with Ralph Erskine to landscape designs that promote human health and well-being.

There are a number of talks that focus on women landscape designers, from Fanny Wilkinson, Marjory Lady Allen of Hurtwood, Brenda Colvin, and Sylvia Crowe in Bristol, to Elisabeth Beazley, Diana Armstrong Bell and other contemporary landscape architects in the can…

Our speakers include past presidents of the Landscape Institute - Brian Clouston, Hal Moggridge, Tim Gale; landscape academics - Ed Bennis, Jan Woudstra, Alan Powers, Luca Csepely-Knorr, Catharine Ward Thompson; historians - Elain Harwood, John Boughton, Katrina Navikas; practitioners – Annie Coombs; Neil Chapman, Jennette Emery-Wallis, Paul Rabbitts, Ian Baggott,  young researchers – Joy Burgess, Sally Watson, Karen Fitzsimon and many more.

The Specials section includestalks celebrating the life and works of two of the Institute’s significant practitioners – Bran Clouston and Hal Moggridge;  and a series of twenty one talks on the C20 designed landscapes that were added to the Historic England register in 2021.

So how can anybody find anything in all these recordings?  The quickest way is to use the search box – type in a strong and simple key word linked with what you are searching for, eg play, Jellicoe, Sweden, and hopefully you will find something that is useful for you.

 

Landscape and Children: design for children’s play - FOLAR Symposium

Brunel Estate by Michael Brown from Michael Brown Collection AR BRO PH5/1/0524 The MERL

In an ideal world, children find many different places outdoors where they enjoy freedom to play doing all sorts of activities and discover and learn a whole host of things from looking, dreaming, laughing, being with other children, testing skills and digging, building and much more. In reality, these sorts of public facilities today in the UK are as rare as hens teeth. When children play it is predominantly indoors and near an electronic device. In schools, where land is still being sold off to support other apparently more essential needs, tarmac - or an equivalent - reigns supreme. Our attitude towards children quite frankly verges on regarding them as no better than an inconvenience. Access to decent local open space within 500m of everyone’s front doors was raised as a promising standard for new housing only to be blown away - probably through economic argument. These young people are the future prime minsters and members of parliament, doctors, nurses, engineers, brilliant imaginative, creative, people in the sciences, arts and humanities, not feral dogs and cats, certainly not people to ignore whatever their age.

For this FOLAR symposium, we invited a variety of experienced people representing those who have researched forgotten theories on the needs of children in the landscape; those who design places for children in public parks and schools and those who analyse the value of some designed family estates from 1960s-1980s; some speakers sit on boards of organisations focused entirely on play, those who have watched and learnt from children, sometimes following dramatic events; and those who support school communities developing and sustaining special places for children. Each speaker includes elements embracing many of these perspectives.

Speakers: Tom Turner, Carley Sefton, Dr Luca Csepely-Knorr and Dr Amber Roberts, Nicola Butler, Helen Woolley, Andrée Davies, Jennette Emery-Wallis: Chair, Adam White, President of Landscape Institute;
March 2019 at The MERL


1. Introduction by Adam White, President of Landscape Institute

3. Learning through Landscapes: the first three decades by Carley Sefton

5. Adventure Play by Nicola Butler

7. Nature play and inclusive design by Andree Davies

2. Patrick Geddes on Landscape architecture for children by Tom Turner

4. Michael Brown and his work with children by Dr Luca Csepely Knorr and Dr Amber Roberts

6. Playing the streets: past, present and future by Helen Woolley

8. Natural active childhoods and children’s play by Jennette Emery-Wallis

Annabel Downs