21 November 2023
Hi all,
The last month has been full of events and connections for NSW members with the most notable being the AILA 2023 Festival, held in October on Kaurna Country in Adelaide. Based around the theme of Unearth the Festival brought together local and international speakers to unpack the physical and metaphoric soil horizons upon which landscape architecture practice is founded.
The Festival kicked off by the AILA 2023 National awards where it was extremely pleasing to see the amazing calibre of work that our profession is leading in addition to the high representation of NSW projects and members being recognised. It was particularly encouraging to see Fiona Morrison, Commissioner of Open Space and Parks at the Department of Planning and Environment in New South Wales, to be recognised for her ongoing contribution to the profession by being awarded the 2023 President's Award for her contribution to the landscape architecture profession. The festival also gave a chance for members of the NSW Executive to have meaningful conversations with the other state executives and their membership. As part of this NSW Executive President David Moir attended the President’s workshop the day prior to the Festival voicing the key issues facing the NSW membership and working with the National Board on the future of the profession.
Since the Festival the NSW Executive has had time to reflect and refocus our direction for the upcoming months as we lead into the end of the year. A core component of this is to build stronger connections with NSW ministers and rebuild connections with policy makers to ensure that AILA is fairly represented in the current conversations being had around building reform, housing and the expansion of our cities.
We have also run a range of members online and physical events of the last month including the design showcase event for the Harbour Park, Barangaroo design competition held at Barangaroo and the NSW regional workshop + End of Year Party at the Merewether Surfhouse.
As I am sure many of us are we are now looking ahead to the end of 2023 and starting to strategise our activities for 2024. As part of this please do reach out to members of the NSW Executive and/or on Memberscape if you have key items that you would like us to coordinate or focus on.
Don’t forget to register for AILA NSW 2023 End of Year Celebration, 11th December at the Shelbourne Hotel Rooftop. Tickets can be purchased here - https://www.aila.org.au/EventDetail?EventKey=N4E01
See you there!
Cheers,
Jason Cuffe
AILA NSW Executive Committee Member