SAH Awards Field Trip Grants to ILASLA and Dade Heritage Trust

The Society of Architectural Historians is pleased to announce recent grants to the Illinois Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ILASLA) and Dade Heritage Trust to support field trip programs for underserved students. The grants are part of the SAH American Architecture and Landscape Field Trip Program, which funds design education and tour programs that give students the opportunity to experience architecture and landscapes firsthand.

ILASLA will use the SAH grant to support its new field trip program “Designing Chicago – Discover Landscape Architecture,” which will launch this September and run annually. The program will introduce high school students from lower-income Chicago areas to the landscape of their city and aims to engage students with a “hands-on” experience that could lead to a career in landscape architecture. ILASLA hopes to address the lack of ethnic, racial, and gender diversity in the landscape architecture profession by inspiring, encouraging, and educating high school students, especially girls and people of color, through the “Designing Chicago” program. Participants will visit four designed landscapes in central Chicago: Bloomingdale Trail (The 606), Millennium Park and the Lurie Garden, the Poetry Foundation, and Northerly Island. Stephen Sears, associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, will lead the tours.

The Dade Heritage Trust will use the SAH grant to help fund its “Historic Places, Green Spaces” educational program, which acquaints Miami-Dade County K-12 students with significant cultural and historic venues where they intersect with recreational spaces within urban Miami. The program aims to inspire an interest in historic and environmental preservation as well as civic pride and community engagement. “Historic Places, Green Spaces” currently utilizes the City of Miami’s Lummus Park and the historic 1855 Wagner Homestead and 1844 Fort Dallas Barracks that reside within the park.

Established in 2015, the SAH American Architecture and Landscape Field Trip Program has made grants to a wide variety of not-for-profits including house museums/creative place making sites, summer workshops focusing on architecture and design, schools of architecture with youth outreach programs, and arts and architecture high schools. SAH reviews applications throughout the year on a rolling basis and is currently accepting applications through September 1. Visit sah.org/field-trip-program for more information.