Landscape Institute EGM 27th June 2023: results

Landscape Institute presidents. Merrick Denton-Thompson, Brodie McAllister, Hal Moggridge at the 2023 LI Members EGM

The Landscape Institute members EGM on 27th June 2023 was an excellent meeting and enjoyable too. I hope the recording of it will be published on YouTube etc. The assembled past presidents, vice-presidents, president elect and other office holders spoke very well and their dedication was commendable. The motion put to the meeting by joint chairs Tim Gale and Helen Tranter was:
We move that steps are taken towards establishing the truth and proper reconciliation with regard to matters of governance leading to the removal of the President-Elect in June 2022. Thus, within 30 days of the EGM, the process and evidence resultant in his removal would be examined by an independent reviewer. The independent reviewer would be appointed by mutual agreement (for instance, the Institute of Arbitrator’s process).
The motion was carried by a thumping majority: 154 LI members voted in favour of the motion and there were zero votes against the motion. This makes 27th June an important day in history of our much-loved Landscape Institute. We hope and expect it will be the day on which everything started to get better. The Board of the LI was invited to send a speaker but did not accept the invitation.
Merrick Denton-Thompson, PPLI, FLI, OBE spoke with great authority, with the experience of a past president, and with a record the chairing several other trusts (including Learning Through Landscapes.
Hal Moggridge PPLI, FLI, OBE presented the results of his careful and very detailed analysis of the procedure by which Brodie was defenestrated. His conclusion was that the Board of Trustees did not follow due process. In my view he is the most distinguished living UK landscape architect.
Brodie McAllister, who was a vice president (and was of course elected president for 2022-4 in June 2022) spoke with clarity, commendable restraint and a wealth of evidence. This was the first occasion on which he had spoken in public about his attempted removal as a trustee. His presentation generated much sympathy in the audience.
Tom Turner’s (small) contribution was to remind the EGM of the Institute’s objectives as defined by it founders. They were (1) to promote the study and general advancement of the landscape profession in all its branches, and (2) to serve as a medium of friendly intercourse between the members and others practicing or interested in the Art. The founders said nothing about wanting to establish an environmental charity, which is how the LI now appears to see itself. The 1997 Royal Charter appears to justify this change of direction by stating that: ‘The Institute is hereby constituted to protect, conserve and enhance the natural and built environment for the benefit of the public by promoting the arts and sciences of Landscape Architecture’.
The friendly intercourse objective was omitted when the LI Royal Charter was adopted in 1997. Perhaps this was done because its necessity is blazingly obvious. The EGM showed how worthwhile friendly intercourse is. To me it is astonishing and reprehensible in equal measure that the current Board of the Landscape Institute has refused, again and again and again, to talk to the group of 7 past presidents (and 140+ others) who are deeply unhappy about has been done in the past 2 years AND about the LI wasting its entire income from registered practices (£170k) on legal proceedings against a fellow board member. This was not a ‘friendly’ thing to do. They should have talked to Brodie and dealt with the issue by mediation if necessary. There was no need for lawyers to be involved.
The use of a whistleblowing procedure was misjudged. Whistleblowing was conceived as a way of protecting the weak from the strong. The LI’s use of the procedure is an example of using whistleblowing to attack, vilify and destroy the weak. The Board created a new power (Regulation 21.5) to do the job. It also spent a lot of members money and refused even one penny for Brodie to spend on defending himself.
The LI’s 2021 Independent Review (by Catherine Brown) cost 75% of the LI’s annual income from practices (£130k) for that year. Her report noted ‘substantial and long-standing problems of culture and behaviour’ in the Institute’s leadership. This is absolutely true and nothing has been done to deal with the problem. So it is festering. Tragic. The time and money devoted to anti-democratic activities should have been devoted to promoting the study and general advancement of the landscape profession in all its branches. Everybody knows what dentists and architects do. Far too few people know what landscape architects do. So we have to keep explaining ourselves to the public, again and again and again. The bad publicity surrounding the Board’s small-minded attack on a colleague has done more than anything in the LI’s history to bring the Landscape Institute into public disrepute.
I’d like to invite those Board members and (if there are any) those secretariat members who have been involved in prosecuting the case against Brodie, to consider their positions, urgently. The LI has a very high staff turnover in its HQ and keeps losing CEOs (Sue Morgan most recently).
Landscape architecture is one of the world’s most important professions. It needs the active support of an enthusiastic membership if it is to flourish as an art, a science and a practice.