2024 has leapt off to a fabulous start and we as a Board are incredibly proud to be supporting a vibrant and growing membership. In particular, I would like to sincerely thank our state executives and committees for their insights, passion, and dedication to AILA. We have some really great work in the pipeline this year, and we can’t wait to share it with our membership.
You may have noticed that the Board has added a fifth key priority in 2024 regarding Education, and I’d like to take this short opportunity to provide some context to why we have done this.
As landscape practitioners we often wonder whether we are still an emerging profession. What would it be like to be able to tell every planning minister and every climate-adaptation leader that within the built environment, landscape architecture is the profession of choice? As landscape architects, our incredibly diverse skill set puts us in good stead to be at the forefront of initiatives around climate resilience, social equality and the creation of great places. However, we do have a challenge ahead. The number of future landscape architecture professionals is dwindling.
In recent years, landscape architecture programs around Australia have been reporting to AILA a decline in student intakes. Notwithstanding the pressures caused by increased costs of living and issues around program funding and structure, landscape architecture programs are still not receiving the profile and advocacy in the community that is critical to attracting new students.
A dwindling supply of trained landscape architects can have flow-on effects through the entire industry ecosystem, including across landscape architecture practice, community and the broader built environment. It could also affect the sustainability of the landscape architecture profession in Australia.
In May 2023, AILA brought together the heads of landscape architecture programs around Australia, representatives from private and public practice, AILA Fresh, the AILA Education Committee, AILA staff and the AILA Board to participate in an AILA Education Summit in Melbourne. The summit established the shared objective of overcoming the dwindling supply of trained landscape architects and ensuring the sustainability of the landscape architecture profession into the future. Via a series of discussions throughout the summit, it became clear that the key to achieving a sustainable profession, laid in the premise of a successful education lifecycle. It was agreed that community, academia, AILA and practice all played equal roles.
As a result the 2024 AILA Board has prioritized the support of the full education lifecycle of landscape architects. This will involve a current revamp of the institute’s Continuing Professional Development (CPD) program and ongoing collaboration with university programs via the AILA Education Committee. Commitment to increasing the profession’s profile also plays a crucial role in shaping our future built environment and helping to ensure that landscape architecture is a profession of choice and the number of landscape architecture professionals in Australia only continues to grow.
Katie Earle, AILA Director and Company Secretary