Dear all,

Welcome once again to our quarterly newsletter. In this edition you will find something of interest, I am sure.

Dr Stephen Taylor continues with an update on his Kyrgyzstan designated landscapes work, and there is further research considering over tourism. Please do fill in the upland birds survey and look out for the next seminar in our Negotiating Cultural Landscapes series. We also report on the development of a Cumbria Curriculum for place-based learning and the success of the Professional Forester Degree Apprenticeship, the only one in the country.  In relation to the Centre as a whole we are working towards setting up an Advisory Board and we be writing out to prospective Board members soon.

On a personal note, this will be my last newsletter, as I leave the University after 27 years and move into consultancy. I would like to  thank everyone for their huge support as we have grown CNPPA over the last four years. I am very proud of how far CNPPA has come in a short time, which could not have been done without you, our protected landscapes family.  I'd also like to publicly thank Tania Lemmey, who has organised our conferences, webinars and meetings and assisted me so efficiently.  CNPPA continues under a caretaker director, Dr Helen Manns, who will introduce herself in the next newsletter.

Best wishes to all, 

Lois

Lois Mansfield, Director of CNPPA

In this issue:

• Colleagues urge Government to act for nature
• Researcher profile: Dr Emma Pope
• Negotiating a Cultural Landscape – public talk series
  
• Study of human impacts on upland birds – questionnaire
  
• American exhibition features Professor Robert Williams' Alchemist's Shack.
• Further funding for our research into ‘over tourism'
• Cumbria Curriculum: place-based learning in Cumbria
  
• Postgraduate research explores walking and landscapes in Jane Austen’s writing
  
• Research note: Co-Management Network Governance System for Sustainable Natural Area Tourism in Kyrgyzstan
• Professional Forester Degree Apprenticeships - 2023 recruitment open
• Economic modelling predicts major fall in upland farm income

Two of our colleagues, Professor Julia Aglionby and Professor Lois Mansfield, were among the high-profile signatories to an open letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak urging the Government to implement nature protection and recovery actions through amendments to the Levelling Up & Regeneration Bill.

Further information can be found in the Wildlife and Countryside Link blog.

Emma's PhD is in the field of transformational adventure tourism. Her doctoral research explored how kayaking and coasteering experiences can connect people with nature, enhance wellbeing, and encourage pro-environmental behaviour based upon a sense of love and care for nature.

After completing her PhD, Emma worked as a freelance nature connection communicator, providing workshops and talks to generate insight into how outdoor experiences can create moments of meaning and connection with self, place, and nature. Before joining the University of Cumbria, Emma worked in Community Engagement at the North Pennines AONB Partnership, developing ‘slow’ walking trails to encourage immersion in nature and sense of place.

Negotiating a Cultural Landscape, our free series of monthly public talks at the University of Cumbria's Ambleside campus, is now in its fourth year.

Our most recent talk was given by guest speaker, Dr Rachael Dickinson, Reader in English and Interdisciplinary Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. This talk took place on 7th March and the title was 'Once more to spin and weave': Ruskin, the craft of living well and the Langdale Linen Industry’. 

Our next event will take place on Tuesday 4th April at 6.30pm. Professor Sally Bushell from Lancaster University will be giving a talk on ‘Arthur Ransome and the Lake District as PlaySpace’.

Image: Endpaper map from Arthur Ransome’s Winter Holiday.

If you would like to join a mailing list to receive updates about Cultural Landscape events at the University of Cumbria, please email Dr Penny Bradshaw. Alternatively, you can follow @CumbriaEnglish on Twitter.

Liam writes: “I am inviting you to participate in this research by completing the following survey. This survey seeks to answer several conservation questions related to the human impact on upland bird populations by identifying public awareness of upland birds and their conservation, the willingness to support conservation of upland ecosystems and finally, the overall impact of the public’s activity on these ecosystems. The series of questions should take 10-15 minutes to complete. Thank you for taking your time to assist me with my research.”

Professor of Fine Art, Robert Williams, is participating in a high-profile exhibition launched in February 2023 at The Aldritch Contemporary Art Museum, Connecticut, USA. Professor Williams will re-locate and re-imagine his long-standing Alchemist’s Shack project from Pennsylvania, into a purpose-built facsimile at The Aldritch. The project focuses on the creation of an alchemical laboratory housed in a vernacular building. Williams says of the project: ‘The Alchemist’s Shack is made up of material that reveals the lost homeland of the ex-pat, creating a nostalgic, if inaccurate view of a past England, and impossible futures for a long-lived alchemist passing through different cultural moments, building a reality that is contingent upon the library and collection of objects contained in the shack. In referencing the first American alchemist, Eirineus Philalethes, it also offers an idealised and largely fictional American alchemical role model, existing nostalgically in a sort of eternal mythic time. The enterprise is very much like alchemy itself - a search for enlightenment, an enquiry that takes on many forms, and rather like alchemy, does so poetically, whilst eclectically plundering other forms of knowledge.’

The exhibition, Prima Materia: The Periodic Table in Contemporary Art, brings together a high-profile list of American, British and international artists. Richard Klein, the exhibition curator writes, ‘(it is) a group exhibition that links individual works of art with an element of the periodic table which each work incorporates. Superficially, the exhibition’s foundation is science, but through expansive curatorial choices the project will reveal the material basis for sociological, emotional, political, and even spiritual subject matter. Artists use specific materials for a reason, quite often for their metaphoric potential, and Prima Materia will explore hard facts as well as alchemical conjecture.’

Images, above: Detail: The Alchemist’s Shack ©Robert Williams 2023

The research will build on the quantitative data obtained in the initial project and utilise qualitative research to focus on stakeholder perceptions of the direct and indirect impact of tourism in communities across Cumbria. 

Part of the study will involve collaboration with other academics in Germany, Colorado and Finland to confirm the methodology adopted in phase one of the research and to identify best practice in tourism planning and sustainable management outside of the UK. 

Photo credit: Cumbria Tourism

The University of Cumbria was commissioned with Cumbria Development Education Centre (CDEC) and Cumbria Action for Sustainability (CAfS) by Cumbria County Council to scope a shared vision for education in Cumbria through a place-based, nature-based curriculum. Framing this scoping report is an ambition that every child has a world class, holistic educational experience in their local setting, which enables them to contribute to society as resilient, confident, and tolerant global citizens.

The scoping report focuses on the provision of place-based learning about the environment and sustainability in Cumbrian schools. Place based learning includes learning about the local environment and wider Cumbrian landscape, issues of sustainability, climate change and biodiversity as well as experiences that build appreciation for nature and the environment. Professor Heather Prince led on this project for University of Cumbria with PhD researcher Rebecca Hordern to explore place-based learning practice in schools and organisations that support place-based learning in Cumbria. It built on the knowledge exchange project funded by Research England to create the evidence base and curriculum framework for the place-based Morecambe Bay Curriculum linked to Eden Project Morecambe.

The Cumbria Curriculum scoping report and framework are available on University of Cumbria's Insight research portal. 

Nada Saadaoui, postgraduate research student at University of Cumbria, is studying Jane Austen’s depiction of walking in Romantic era English landscapes, focusing on the significance of walking in the author’s life and work in relation to the philosophies and ideologies of the period.

Through Austen’s literature, Nada has considered the evolution of walking from a transport necessity, through cultural and economic changes, into a form of recreation, social display, physical exercise and female emancipation.

Nada explains: ‘Romantic heroines walk as a symbol of their strength and liberty and for many social and individual reasons. For example, walking in Jane Austen’s literature is an activity for developing friendships, developing intimacy, gaining clarity, and privacy, and resolving disputes.’

Senior Lecturer in Tourism and Hospitality Management, Dr Stephen Taylor, continues to take a leading role in ongoing research into the impacts of mountain tourism in Kyrgyzstan, specifically concerning the sustainability of commercial mountaineering activities on Lenin Peak.

Identifying a need for effective governance of mountain tourism within a sustainable development framework, Dr Taylor has recently proposed a Co-management Network Governance System (CNGS) for application on Lenin Peak and beyond. This is based upon his doctoral research, completed 2016, which developed a governance system oriented towards the sustainable development of natural areas within the context of UK national parks.

Dr Taylor’s recent research note outlines the key components of the Co-management Network Governance System. 

Photo credit: Jason Sheldrake. Image: Fieldwork, recording debris, on Pik Lenin.

Current apprentices are employed in locations including Devon, Gloucestershire, Yorkshire and Cumbria. Alongside their job roles, apprentices attend our Ambleside or Carlisle campus or the Forestry Commission’s Cannock Chase training centre for a block of tuition approximately every eight weeks.

The programme is suitable for new entrants to forestry and existing practitioners keen to gain new skills and knowledge, provided each candidate is employed in a role with some woodland management responsibility.

Could this innovative, accredited development opportunity be right for employees in your organisation?

To find out more about the apprenticeship structure and a September 2023 start please contact the National School of Forestry.

Images: apprentices visit Ae Forest, near Lockerbie.

Julia Aglionby, one of our Professors in Practice, had her economic modelling data used in a recent full-page article in the Financial Times (6th March print edition) name-checking University of Cumbria. The data projected forward to 2028/29 likely Upland Farm Business Incomes in England, predicting a more than 50% drop in income in real terms from now, under the new post-Brexit policies as the UK leaves the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). 

The concern is that farmers will not have an incentive to adapt farming practices that deliver more for public goods, such as nature recovery and climate change mitigation, if the returns to their businesses from the new Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELM) are low. James Rebanks, Minette Batters and other hill farmers were quoted. The article resulted in much debate on Twitter and an interview with Julia on Radio 4’s Farming Today on 7th March.

The full article is available here to FT subscribers.

Image credit: Financial Times

Our Vision is to be a national and international centre of excellence for transdisciplinary study and research into national parks and protected areas, that addresses complex local and global challenges, and develops innovative practices to enhance landscapes and communities.

Our External Objectives are: 

· To grow our understanding of ecological, social and economic processes and change.

· To encourage dialogue within and between all communities.

· To create a safe space for addressing the contested issues.

· To provide an inspiring programme of lectures and conferences for all.

· To work in partnership with local communities to support knowledge sharing and transformative sustainable business practices that contribute to thriving communities, biodiversity and climate action.

· To use art and literature as catalysts for conversations, critical thinking, engagement and communication.

You can join our mailing list here.