Everyone has their own special places – it might be a park or an area of countryside; an historic building or a modern development; it could be a place where you like to relax and unwind or socialise with friends. The interactive map on the Heart of Landscape website allows you to locate, share and celebrate your favourite places and landscapes in the Black Country. Perhaps your landscape is a place you know well and have fond memories of; or maybe it’s a new place you’ve found that you want to tell others about. The website will be open throughout June and July. Visit the website or listen to Beacon Radio for more information on the Heart of Landscape, including your chance to vote for your favourite place in the Black Country online during June. In July there will also be an Event Day at one of the landscapes on the map. Whatever your favourite places might be, the Heart of Landscape website allows you to put them ‘on the map’ so that other people can learn about and enjoy them! You can also give your ideas for how they can be improved. All these ideas will be recorded and collected into a report on what makes the Black Country special. The Heart of Landscape website has been developed for the West Midlands Landscape Partnership, with support from Natural England. The website is a pilot project to test how information about places that people value can be used to understand perception of landscape. Engaging everyone in landscape protection, management and planning is a key commitment of the European Landscape Convention (for more information see http://landscapecharacter.org.uk/elc/).
