Sense of Place Map

A Sense of Place Map is a picture in whatever form occurs to you that addresses three questions:

Where am I?

Where have I come from?

Where am I going?

Although text is allowed in a Sense of Place Map, the shift of emphasis from verbal or textual reporting to pictorial representation allows new insights to arise or be brought to the surface. This is akin to the effect of Freewriting. As in Freewriting, there should be no obligation to share or display your work. However, discussion of the typically diverse aspirations and trajectories of group members that emerged through this exercise can be thought-provoking.

A Sense of Place Map may be drawn at the start of a project to provide an impressionistic picture of your aspirations. Or it may be drawn at the end of the project to place the project into a longer trajectory of your work and life. These uses of a Sense of Place Map evolved from a more ecological version in Thomashow (1995).

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Thomashow, M. (1995). Ecological Identity: Becoming a Reflective Environmentalist. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

(See Phase J)