14/08/2025
23–25 June 2025—EPICenter, Nova Gorica—Landscape Festival "On the Borders of the Planet"
UNISCAPE (the European university network dedicated to the study and research of landscape, in accordance with the principles of the Council of Europe’s European Landscape Convention – the Florence Convention) and the University of Nova Gorica, as part of the official programme of the European Capital of Culture 2025 Nova Gorica - Gorizia, organised the first UNISCAPE Landscape Festival entitled On the Borders of the Planet, which took place from 23 to 25 June 2025 at the EPICentre in Nova Gorica. The Festival celebrated both the cross-border European Capital of Culture 2025 and the 25th anniversary of the Council of Europe’s European Landscape Convention.
The opening day of the Festival was marked by the 25+25 exhibition, presenting selected contributions from young researchers and students from European universities that are members of the UNISCAPE network. The rectors of the three universities that have so far chaired the UNISCAPE network—Università IUAV di Venezia, Universidad de Gran Canaria, and the University of Nova Gorica, which currently leads the network under the presidency of Prof. Dr. Saša Dobričić—were invited. We were also joined by two representatives of the Council of Europe responsible for the European Landscape Convention, united in the shared wish to strengthen interdisciplinary cooperation to consolidate the principles of the Florence Convention in both educational and research initiatives. We highlighted the crucial role of university networks and alliances in creating a common European university space and promoting the boundlessness of knowledge, rooted in a culture of cooperation, shared responsibility, and overcoming all limitations. Such collaborations form the foundation for understanding and realising a culture of the commons – not only in the European space, but also in the broader sense of the planetary community of living beings. The Festival launched the process of adopting the UNISCAPE University Declaration Nova Gorica/Gorizia on Borderless Landscapes, through which the academic community once again reaffirmed its commitment to the landscape as a shared and living space that seamlessly connects culture, nature, and society.
Keynote speakers guided us through diverse dimensions of landscapes, perception, and practice—from observing cosmic landscapes, to journeys through European landscapes, to the art of gardening and co-creating the cross-border dimension as both a symbolic and concrete space of the commons.
In the afternoon, the Festival also hosted the Next Generation Landscape Forum 2025, aimed at actively engaging young researchers, experts, and students from various scientific disciplines in discussions on the landscape as a space where nature and culture blend without boundaries in different perceptual forms. Observing the Forum were members of the local Youth group for GO! 2025 advocacy For an Art-Based Citizenship.
The event was also marked by the arrival of artist Bruno Doedens, who, after cycling 2,500 kilometres together with the travelling grove of the Circle4Change project, arrived in the European Capital of Culture, where he was welcomed by the local UNG and GO! BORDERLESS travelling grove.
The second day of the Festival took place in the working spirit of five landscape studios, which discussed the five key points of the UNISCAPE University Declaration Nova Gorica/Gorizia on Borderless Landscapes, as well as in workshops with the local community and the Circle4Change project team, which gifted a birthday tree to young people of all generations.
Throughout the Festival, activities were organised with the local community within the framework of the experimental activities of the GreenInCities project (Horizon Europe), aimed at neurosensory perception of the landscape, heat islands, and pollution.
Over three days, European universities came together in the European Capital of Culture, in a space where borders fade and landscapes speak!
UNISCAPE is the only European university network entirely dedicated to the study and research of landscape, in accordance with the principles of the Florence Convention.
