LOCAL LANDSCAPES

Tirlun Lleol

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Welcome to Local Landscapes - Tirlun Lleol

What is Local Landscapes?

Local Landscapes - Tirlun Lleol is an initiative of Monmouthshire County Council with support from the Countryside Council for Wales.  It is a method that community groups can use to look at their local landscape, decide what makes it special, and then begin one or more projects to celebrate or conserve those special qualities.  A toolkit has been produced to help local communities to do this, and you can download it from these pages. 

Wales does have protected landscapes, such as National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, but there are other places local to us where we live and work that are just as special.  Such areas are made up of an accumulation of things that have happened; agricultural practices, battles, industrialisation, changes to the social fabric of the place, family histories and ties - layer upon layer of change in the local landscapes with which we are so familiar.  It is often this familiarity that makes these areas special to us, and locally distinctive.  They also express for Welsh people the concepts of 'bro' and 'ardal' - a sense of continuity in, and of belonging to a particular place.

Change is not always welcomed, and the Local Landscapes project helps local people to define what is good and what is important about where they live so that they can help to conserve its special qualities for future generations.

The Local Landscape Toolkit

The toolkit provides comprehensive information, and describes various activities that you can use with your own community to get them involved and gather their ideas and opinions of where you live.  Through this process you can develop an Action Plan to improve, protect or celebrate what makes your place special to you and your neighbours.  The process can also result in projects or initiatives that will make more of where you live.  The toolkit is designed to help achieve some or all of these outcomes for your community:

• Bring the community together to discuss issues and come to agreement about what is special about where you live

• Seeing the local landscape in terms of a local resource that can potentially bring economic benefit to your community

• Highlighting what is distinctive locally can help to protect it

• Funding applications will be strengthened by showing that the wider community has been involved

• It should lead to projects that can be brought 'off the shelf' when funding opportunities arise.

The toolkit includes a detailed process that you can follow if you wish and a step by step guide:

Stage One 
Set up a steering group or a committee to run the project.
Gather together ideas and support for your project.
Hold an Action Planning workshop or meeting to provide feedback and decide what to do next
Apply for funding to undertake any projects that have been identified.

Stage Two
Undertake main projects and events
Prepare an Action Plan
Celebrate your achievements!

Ideas for action!

The kind of projects that you can undertake are limited only by your community's imagination and feasibility - here are a few ideas:

• Walking the boundaries of your community

• Making community or parish maps

• Drawing and painting projects, public artworks

• Writing stories, story telling events, drama and performance

• Crafts - hedgelaying, stone walling, country seats, signs, tiles

• Festival celebrating local interest, famous person, or local product

• Nature walks

• Nature surveys such as pond dipping, hedgerow surveys, bird counts

• Web site creation to display local projects to a wider audience

• Local food projects which support local farmers and growers

• Local timber and wood projects that help support good woodland management

• Renewable energy projects that can provide energy for the local community from landscape resources

• Preparing Village Design Statements or landscape guidelines which can help ensure that future developments are in keeping with existing buildings or local features.

The Tools in the Toolkit

Case studies

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For more information or assistance with the Local Landscape Initiative please contact:

Rural Community Action Monmouthshire
Richard Lewis or Shirley Hughes 01873 736037
or email

Sustainable Communities Officer
Colette Mooney 01633 644108
or email

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