THE landscape of the Dales rarely fails to surprise you. A change of light, season or one’s emotions gives the familiar a fresh and inspiring aspect, writes Bruce McLeod, chairman of the Friends of the Dales.
In the 150th anniversary edition of the Yorkshire Dales Review we have tried to capture the experience of gaining a new perspective.
We decided to hand the magazine over to a younger generation to create The Youth Edition: Speaking to the Future. It is a forum for younger people who live and work in the Dales to share their hopes, fears, passions and projects.
The Review started a year after the Yorkshire Dales Society, now known as
Friends of the Dales, was founded in 1981. The Review set out to be a “regular periodical” about conservation and communities in the Dales as well as a forum to share ideas and to understand other viewpoints apart from our own.
Edited by Fleur Speakman for 35 years, it went on to feature and record all things Yorkshire Dales from flowers, photography and geology to literature, cultural heritage and national park authority policy.
You can now enjoy this wealth of knowledge about and “common love of” the Yorkshire Dales online; all 149 issues have recently been digitised and indexed.
In the 1989 autumn edition Colin Speakman wrote an article titled Facing
the Implication of Change. In it he referred to the ‘continuing debate about the kind of countryside which is going to emerge in the Yorkshire Dales in the very near future’.
He wonders, for instance, if it [would] make more economic sense
to allow certain parts of the Dales retreat to wilderness in order to stop the
destruction of habitats.
He concludes: “Understanding what is actually happening to the Yorkshire Dales - is the first step to finding a solution.” This understanding is more vital than ever as we face the fall out of the climate emergency and the Covid-19 pandemic, the latter very likely a symptom of environmental destruction.
Most of us involved with groups like Friends of the Dales have of course a
distinct view of the environment and its social and economic underpinnings. Most of us benefitted from the post-war boom, stability and welfare state, with
attendant access to long term jobs, good pensions, free education, health services, housing and reliable seasons.
This security, and the expectations and assumptions that go with it, has vanished for those under 40. They live in a state of precariousness and vulnerability that for most of us has not existed for 70 years. In short, many younger people view the Dales from a very different stand point.
The debate over second homes, for example, though extremely important, means less to the 20 year old; she is more concerned about environmental degradation caused by social inequality, carbon emissions, plastics, pollution, and planetary systems collapse.
To find our contributors we approached Settle High School, Leeds Beckett
University, Plastic Free Skipton, Extinction Rebellion, local farmers, and the
Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust among others. The contributors range from
students at Settle Primary School to staff in the Yorkshire Dales National Park
Authority.
Primary school students grilled author Katie Daynes about her new book on all things plastic.
There are illustrations about tree guards and upland peat bogs; photographs of and about those who work in the Dales. They are voices seeking to enunciate a future for the Dales as it is challenged by unprecedented and unpredictable forces. Taken as one, they offer us an uplifting vision of a green, new Dales.
Due to coronavirus we’ve had to postpone the release of a hard copy but a PDF
can be found on our website.
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