Open Eye Gallery is honoured to receive the Merseyside Civic Society Rita Cheesman Heritage Interpretation Award 2024 for the TreeStory project.
In selecting TreeStory for its 2024 award for heritage interpretation, Merseyside Civic Society recognises a project which takes an innovative step into the digital world, engages with individuals, families, schools and communities, and, reaches out to the whole Liverpool City Region.
MCS recognised not only the innovative character of the project, but also the creative enterprise, inter-agency cooperation and personal contributions which have come together to make TreeStory.
The TreeStory website, with its helpful guidance and easy to use means of submitting written and spoken personal and group stories of particular trees together with the use of digital photography is a new and welcome way of broadening the interpretation of heritage in different ways.
The Society also celebrates the project’s inspirational subject choice, which has a long resonance for MCS. The Trees Preservation Society was one of the three original local groups which came together in 1909 to form the City Guild, the precursor of MCS. “Trees”, as the project website states, “form the perfect vehicle through which to tell the story of a region”. And today, we are aware not only of their historical story, but of their vulnerability, and their role as environmental indicators of the threats of climate change and the possible scope for adaptation.
MCS also acknowledged the personal contributions to TreeStory of Andy Yates, photographer and creative producer, and Bernadette McBride, education and heritage consultant.
Among those institutions to whom credit is also due for their contributions to TreeStory are:
You can share a story about your favourite tree in the Liverpool City Region and become part of the project at treestory.me.
Image by Declan Connolly
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