Welcome to the blog!

Welcome to Shared Landscapes, a blog for the participants of the 2008 Laval University's Summer Field School in Built Heritage and Cultural Landscapes (Cours d'été patrimoine bâti et payages culturels in situ) in the Gaspésie in Canada.

After three intensive weeks with all of you, I missed the interaction, so I thought, "why don't we share our continuing cultural landscape experiences with each other?" The idea is to show buildings and landscapes that you are experiencing, whether at home, at school, on trips, or as projects. I initially ran the idea by Silvia. She suggested a blog, and so I set one up. After a "test-drive" and conferring, we now invite everyone else to join in. In this way, we can stay in touch with each another and keep learning about cultural landscapes in Canada, the U. S. and possibly elsewhere (perhaps the Erbil citadel in Kurdistan of Iraq!).

Include some photos and briefly tell about it, such as how it came to be, how it evolved, its cultural meaning, if there are any preservation/conservation issues, and your relationship to it.

I have registered each participant (for whom I have an email address) as an author who can submit a posting. Use the language of your choice. Blog as often as you wish. Fill out a personal profile if you wish. Please observe copyright laws and ask permission if you want to use someone else's photo or article. FYI, Silvia and I chose the small photo format in our posts, and 640 pixels on the long side is a good size to upload so they are not too big when clicked in the blog.

I hope you will join in and share your landscapes.

Happy blogging!

Janet