Meeting the European national chapters and countries, IALE International and IALE-Europe
During the IALE World Congress in Milan, the EC took the opportunity to gather colleagues from all European countries to exchange ideas about IALE and to strengthen the relationship with and among the national chapters, which is one of the action points of the EC as presented on the general assembly in 2019 (read here).
The meeting took place on 4 July 2019 and gathered representatives of European IALE National Chapters, representatives of other European countries, IALE International, and the EC of IALE-Europe. In total, 32 representatives from the following countries attended the meeting: Belgium, Denmark, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Turkey.
The meeting started with brief announcements about IALE events to take place in the future and that will be announced via the newsletter and Twitter.
Aspects of communication between IALE-Europe and its members were brought up (for example the dissemination of the newsletter), as well as financial aspects and the recurrent payments through PayPal.
The relationship between IALE and other organizations were deemed very important. Members pointed out that we need to develop a clear message for the European Union, to let them know that we are a united community with a clear goal and idea about what we want to do with respect to European landscapes. Representations of IALE-Europe in the Council of the European Landscape Convention and in the IPES panel for biodiversity were discussed.
European members of IALE were encouraged to apply for organizing thematic workshops, for which IALE-Europe offers support. The EC of IALE-Europe board also took the opportunity to announce the host of the IALE European Congress, which will be organised in Warsaw (Poland) in collaboration with the Polish colleagues. Read more here.
Representatives of the Editorial Board of the journal of Landscape Online stressed that they will offer support for young researchers who wish to publish their research results. IALE-Europe is also supporting the journal. Read more here.
The past and new presidents of IALE International expressed their appreciation to the organisation of IALE-Europe, which is considered as a good working regional chapter that can be considered as inspiration for other regional chapters gathering different countries.
Finally, we thanked the Italian chapter for hosting the World Congress. They highlighted that they will develop (on) the legacy of the congress.