Listening to the Landscape: Interpretive Planning for Ecological Literacy

Abstract

Interpretation is a specialized communication process designed to help connect people with their heritage through first-hand experience with the object, artifact or landscape. As such, it is a powerful tool for developing ecological literacy. However, interpretation could play a stronger role in nurturing ecological literacy, particularly at the bioregional level. A landscape approach to interpretive planning is positioned as one pathway to an ecological literacy which seeks to encourage an informed, meaningful and actionoriented connection to all life. The paper argues for an open and inclusive approach to interpretive planning which seeks to respect the needs of the human and more-thanhuman inhabitants in an effort to build on the connective potential of interpretation to home-place. Four guiding principles to a landscape approach to interpretive planning are presented.