The Living Landscape explores how landscapes shape the communities that inhabit them—and how those communities, in turn, shape their landscapes.

A landscape is not simply a backdrop to human life. Moorlands, mountains, coastlines, forests, farmland and urban neighbourhoods create different conditions for economic activity, social relationships, cultural identity, health, wellbeing, opportunity and belonging. They influence what people can do, how they move, where they work, how communities connect and how they imagine their futures.

The project brings together local communities, researchers, practitioners, artists and organisations to investigate these relationships through place-based research, ethnography, conversation and creative practice.

We might explore how a changing upland landscape affects farming communities; how a former industrial landscape continues to shape identity and opportunity; or how access to green space influences life in an urban neighbourhood.

By looking beyond environmental condition alone, the project asks:

What does a landscape do to a community?

And equally:

What happens to a landscape when the community that depends upon it changes?