Other WMNP Award Winners
Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Botanic Garden, India
Armed Forces Community Garden, UK
Black Country Core Strategy, UK
Black Country UNESCO Urban Geopark, UK
Blossom Together, Birmingham, UK
Cultural Infrastructure Map, West Midlands, UK
George’s Park, Birmingham, UK
Making Space for Nature, Solihull, UK
Linear Park, Coventry UK
Naturally Connected Communities, UK
Our Future City Plan, Birmingham, UK
Planting Our Futures, Solihull, UK
Purple Horizons, West Midlands, UK
River Cole Community Commons, UK
Rural Patterns Katerini, Greece
Val di Sole Blueprint, Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy
Waterways for all, Birmingham, UK
Announcements 2022
Announcing the 2022 winners, Dame Fiona Reynolds, Chair of the West Midlands National Park Foundation and former Director General of the National Trust said “I am hugely inspired by such a range and number of outstanding projects. These awards are both a testament to all of the winners and mark the launch of the West Midlands National Park onto the world stage. Never has such an innovative and visionary approach been so sorely needed”.
Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands said “here in the West Midlands we pride ourselves in leading the national debate on how the regions can drive sustainable economic growth while addressing environmental, social and climatic challenges with vigour. The West Midlands National Park, and these awards, demonstrate to the UK and the world that we have moved beyond debate, to action. My heartfelt congratulations to all of the award winners and to the West Midlands National Park team.”
Commenting on the Awards, the judging panel said “the range of projects, from community public health initiatives, through city-wide biodiversity programs to pan-regional strategic platforms, shows us how the West Midlands National Park ethos is really getting embedded into the psyche of the region. More than that, its’ approach of reimagining landscape for a better future is finding its way into visions, policies, built projects and community movements and is helping to trigger region-wide initiatives. When internationally renowned research begins to have an impact in the daily lives of citizens and stakeholders, then you know that you have something significant. As a panel we were incredibly impressed by the creativity, imagination, and ambition of all the winning projects. We are delighted to award a special WMNP International Judges Award to the interdisciplinary project, City of Nature, developed by Birmingham City Council, in recognition of its scope and impact across policy, finance and governance. We hope that the City of Nature approach will become a model for cities in other countries. We are also pleased to announce a special WMNP International Project Award, for the Gramer Haor project in Bangladesh, led by Co.LAB at Birmingham City University, for their outstanding project focused on grass-roots community engagement and impact in developing economies.”
After the announcement of the awards, Professor Julian Beer, Deputy Vice Chancellor of Birmingham City University said “as we applaud these outstanding projects from across the region it is important to remember that the ethos reflected in them is founded in a combination of internationally excellent research and fundamental impact in the world of landscape architecture and placemaking more generally. We are delighted to welcome three world-renowned academics and practitioners as visiting professors to the West Midlands National Park Lab and to Birmingham City University. Their engagement, coupled with the momentum that the West Midlands National Park and these awards now clearly have is a source of great pride for the University and the region.”
Professor Kathryn Moore, Director of the WMNP Lab and Professor of Landscape Architecture said “this second year of the WMNP Awards marks an important milestone in the delivery of the West Midlands National Park. We were impressed by the volume and quality of projects applying for an award and the list of finalists tells a story of creativity and innovation from across the region and beyond. We were delighted that the judges chose the City of Nature for their special award as this project in particular exemplifies many of the core tenets that are embedded in our approach, and we would like to congratulate the project leads and the whole team at Birmingham City Council for delivering such an impressive and far reaching project. Our first international project award winner, Gramer Haor, Bangladesh, marks an expansion of the WMNP Awards programme. At the request of a number of international universities and professional organisations the 2023 WMNP awards will include a specific category for projects demonstrating global best practice.”
Announcements 2024
Announcing 2024’s finalists and winners, Prof Kathryn Moore, director of the WMNP Lab said “It has been overwhelming and very significant to see so many extraordinary projects submitted for the awards, and it’s been a real privilege to look at them, to understand all the work that has been done and to learn so much from the approaches that have been developed. I wish each project the very best in how they develop in the future, and it will be fascinating to hear what happens next. Thank you for the determination and commitment you’ve all shown, and to all of these organisations who have contributed to making these projects so spectacular.”
A representative of the judging panel said “as a panel we were incredibly impressed by the creativity, imagination, and ambition of all the winning projects. We are delighted to award Confluence Periurban Park in Prague and Atlas for a City Region in the Irish Northwest border region, as joint winners for their bold, creative, and insightful research and community engagement that produced striking new visions for their respective landscapes. In their own ways, each demonstrated how landscape-led ambition can enable people at all levels from government, community, economics and commerce to realise and celebrate landscape’s immense restorative capacity and its place as the infrastructure that underpins all aspects of our lives. The judges were likewise pleased to highly commend Youth: do we cultivate the future for its forward-looking approach investing in young people to continue traditional practices to sustain rural communities in Italy.
Accepting the award for the Confluence Peri-urban park, Deputy Mayor of Prague Petr Hlaváček said “on behalf of the City of Prague we thank you for the recognition for our project which helps give us more energy on long process to building this park.”
Gareth Doherty, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and principal investigator for the Atlas for a City Region said “I am so happy and honoured to receive this award which is a collaborative effort which involved many people on both sides of the border between Ireland and Norther Ireland, but also across the Atlantic between Harvard colleagues and students, the councils of Derry, Strabane and Donegall together with the people of the Irish Northwest who were involved in our project.”