Who possesses this landscape? – The man who bought it or I who am possessed by it? (Norman McCaig)

Chair

Raoul Curtis-Machin
Operations Manager for Culloden Battlefield, Abertarff House and Hugh Miller’s Cottage, National Trust for Scotland

Raoul Curtis-Machin is the National Trust for Scotland Operations Manager for Culloden Battlefield, Abertarff House and Hugh Miller’s Cottage. He has a wealth of heritage, politics, communications and landscape management experience. He was a strategic adviser for the National Trust for six years, covering England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Raoul also helped protect some of the Scotland’s most valuable landscapes when he was the Landscape Historian with Historic Environment Scotland. He is also a journalist, publisher and lobbyist, and he represented the UK Government as Commissioner-General at the Antalya Expo 2016.

Speakers

Murray Ferguson
Director of Planning and Place, Cairngorms National Park Authority

Murray has worked on the collaborative management of the Cairngorms area for more than 20 years and currently oversees the National Park Authority’s work on planning, rural development, sustainable tourism, visitor services and community development. He is especially interested in the management of protected areas that are based on people and place, thriving together. Murray is a science graduate (Geography) with two postgraduate degrees (Masters in Rural Resources Planning and Masters of Business Administration) and has worked for non-governmental organisations elsewhere in Scotland and in South America.


Dennis Holm
Senior Lecturer, University of the Faroe Islands

Dennis was the mayor of the municipality of Vágur (population app. 1400) on Suðuroy, the southernmost of the Faroe Islands until the end of 2020. During this period he was also head of the board of the Faroese Municipal Organisation (Kommunufelag Føroya), worked as a researcher at the Research Center for Social Development, and the independent research centre within the social sciences- which merged with the University of the Faroe Islands in 2008. He also served as the Director of the Research Centre from 2005 to 2012. After 8 years as a mayor in municipal politics, he is now back at the department of History and Social science at the University of the Faroe Islands.


Jean-Philippe Messier
Founder/ General Manager, Réserve Mondiale de la Biosphère Manicouagan

Founder and general manager of the RMBMU, Jean-Philippe set up an organisation mandated with a UNESCO designation, the result of a broad consultation of key players in the Manicouagan, mobilised behind the objective of positioning the region within the world network of biosphere reserves. Today, with more than 700 sites in nearly 130 countries, this network brings together a wide variety of entities. Over the years, the RMBMU has become a major agent of change in its region and a benchmark within its operation. To achieve this and deploy the full leeway required to accomplish the RMBMU's mission, Jean-Philippe notably led the organisation's shift towards a business model based on the principles of the social economy and territorial entrepreneurship. Today, the activities of the RMBMU are deployed within three business units for which he assures the leadership, and a mechanism for the reinvestment of autonomous revenues as levers for the deployment of numerous projects in this UNESCO designated territory.