Award for Advocacy

The Vernacular Architecture Forum encourages and supports citizen efforts to protect our vernacular built heritage. The protection and preservation of our vernacular built heritage depends on good stewardship by property owners supported by sound government land use policies. However, the long-term preservation of our cultural heritage is rarely achieved without the support of a well-informed, involved citizenry.

The VAF seeks to encourage citizen-based advocacy by recognizing exemplary efforts and achievements on behalf of our vernacular built heritage. The VAF Award for Advocacy honors individuals and groups for exceptional contributions toward the appreciation and protection of vernacular buildings and landscapes. The award recognizes outstanding initiative, commitment, and action to promote and protect vernacular resources. The award may be made in recognition of a specific advocacy effort, or on the basis of the nominee's long-term record of advocacy.

The nomination deadline for the 2012 Award for Advocacy will be announced shortly.

See our Tools for Advocacy page, including links to websites that offer information and advice to help you in your own advocacy efforts.

Award for Advocacy Winners

2011 Award

These remarks were delivered by Louis Nelson, director of UVA's Falmouth Field School in Historic Preservation, at the VAF annual meeting in Falmouth, Jamaica:

Peter Maxwell has worked for well more than a decade for the material preservation of this remarkable city. As Falmouth Heritage Renewal's longest-standing Jamaican employee, Peter has been and remains an absolutely essential component of the preservation of Falmouth. He began by working with Jim Parrent, FHR's American director, to build relationships of trust in the community by digging soak-away latrines in the heart of the town's poorest district. Once established in the community, Peter has become an essential advocate for preservation among everyday residents of the community, working to help locals understand the significance of preserving Falmouth's smallest and most vulnerable vernacular buildings. He has also spend untold hours as a mentor in FHR's crafts training program, working to help at-risk youth embrace the disciplines of preservation carpentry and masonry, in the hopes that they translate those skills into viable employment with local building contractors. Peter has also been an essential fixture in the success of UVA's Falmouth Field School in Historic Preservation, serving for years as the American students' host in and to the community. We could never have completed our work without the steadfast and long-suffering Peter Maxwell. I venture to suggest that there has not been a single preservation effort in the city of Falmouth that has been undertaken without his deft hand and faithful commitment to the job at hand. It is for these reasons and many more that Peter Maxwell is the recipient of the 2011 VAF Advocacy Award.

2010 Award

No award was made in 2010.

2009 Award

The Vernacular Architecture Forum encourages and supports citizen efforts to protect our vernacular built heritage. We do so in part through our Award for Advocacy, which was established to recognize exemplary efforts and achievements in advocacy. This year, the VAF’s Advocacy Committee presented its second Award for Advocacy at the Butte Conference to Butte Citizens for Preservation and Revitalization, better known as Butte CPR.

Butte CPR lives up to the high standard set by our inaugural award last year in Fresno, which was presented to the "Preserving California’s Japantowns" project, a statewide effort to identify, research and document historic resources located in Japantowns throughout California.

All those who attended the Butte Conference experienced the fruits of Butte CPR’s work firsthand. Founded 15 years ago, Butte CPR works with local government, businesses, civic organizations and individuals to preserve and promote the nation’s largest National Historic Landmark District and the nearly 6,000 historically-significant resources that it encompasses.

The City of Butte was literally built on a foundation of copper whose exploitation at first sustained the community, and then consumed it. While it’s hard to ignore mining’s legacy of environmental devastation, Butte CPR recognizes that this same legacy has endowed Butte with a unique heritage that--if wisely protected and promoted-- can provided the community with a sustainable future, providing the city with its competitive edge.

Through their educational tours, lectures, preservation workshops, website, articles, and participation in public forums and events, Butte CPR promotes public awareness of the value of historic architecture. Their award program celebrates individuals and groups for outstanding stewardship of historic structures.

Butte CPR provides financial assistance to preserve, restore, and revitalize historic buildings. Butte CPR's efforts have helped save or otherwise benefit dozens of buildings, both residential and commercial, including the Mary MacLane House, the Dumas Brothel, the O’Rourke, and the Acoma. When appropriate, they mothball abandoned buildings, securing and stabilizing them for future use. To date, they have given nearly $25,000 in small Historic Improvement Grants to local property owners.

Since its inception, Butte CPR has actively engaged in local government and policy. CPR advocates for economic revitalization through historic preservation that is supported by preservation-friendly public policy, and played a central role in the 2007 passage of a historic preservation ordinance that includes mandatory demolition reviews and renovation design guidelines.

In their nomination of Butte CPR for the VAF Award for Advocacy, the Montana Preservation Alliance noted that Butte CPR is a superior award candidate for its outstanding initiative, tenaciousness, creativity, and commitment. The VAF board couldn’t agree more, and congratulates Butte CPR for its achievements.

2008 Award

The VAF made its inaugural Award for Advocacy at the recent Fresno Conference. The award was presented to Donna Graves and Jill Shiraki on behalf of the Preserving California’s Japantowns project.

Preserving California’s Japantowns is the first statewide effort to identify, research and document historic resources located in Japantowns throughout California. The project embodies all the qualities the Award for Advocacy was created to recognize. The Advocacy Committee was especially impressed by how the project has fulfilled the award criterion to "advance preservation and awareness of vernacular buildings and landscapes through education, publications, media, technology, and/or public outreach." The effort was consciously designed not only to document resources associated with California's Japantowns but also to lay the groundwork for stewardship, preservation and interpretation of these sites, whose histories have been hidden due to the violent disruption of WWII incarceration of all people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast.