We honor with gratitude the land itself and all the people who have stewarded it throughout the generations and into the future.
We commit to educating ourselves about all stories of belonging to place, and to sharing the long-silenced public voices out of the shadow into the light. We pledge to better understand our varied historical relationship to place and contribute to creating a sense of belonging for all on this earth.
Mission
Create a platform for expression of place.
Unearth stories of place as they relate to memories, sensory experiences, migration, immigration, imagination, creativity, and idea making.
Explore the language of place.
Discover the ways in which our stories of place are similar and different.
Reflect on our interconnectedness to place and arrive at new understandings about the diversity of ways we feel we belong in the world.
About
The Place Where Project is a publicly-generated, creative expression of our relationships to place; it is an unearthing of emotional ties to place and an amplification of the diversity of languages that people use to communicate significant places. In giving voice, this project also hopes to give value to all places- urban, rural, wild, or imaginary. This project is an exercise in gratitude, a love letter to favorite places, an expression of solidarity to places that have brought us pain, a capturing of our intimate ties to the landscape.
The Place Where Project has come to fruition in a time of great uncertainty and change- social and environmental. For many, this time has redefined the ways we see and listen to the world around us. Thus, in capturing stories of place, this project also hopes to explore our relationship to the land, our ties to nature and city as a way of honoring the land and people that support us. During this time we hope that connection to land and people through examining our interactions with place can be a first step towards creating positive social and environmental change.
In the midst of difficult times, we hope that this collective platform for expression of place will be a safe space for all and bring comfort, joy, gratitude, connection, and new understandings.
Above, Environmental Art Intern Jackie Reiss talks about The Place Where Project.
Maps have been one of the most important human inventions, allowing humans to explain and navigate their way through the world. The earliest known maps are of the stars, not the earth. The Place Where Project creates a new map and a new re-naming of the world through your place-based experiences, that offers a sense of belonging for all on this earth.
Defining Connection to Place
The many connections between people and place that this project hopes to uncover stem from a sense of connectedness to place known as place attachment. Place attachment is the emotional meaning that we ascribe to all types of environments, whether natural, built, internal, or external, through experience, memories, observations, and interactions with others (both human and nonhuman), that create a meaningful bond between person and place. There is no ‘right’ way to experience place meaning: there are places that are beautiful to us, places of trauma, places we share with others, etc. Just as we transform places, places profoundly transform us as they intertwine the social, political, environmental, cultural, spiritual, economic, and historical facets of our world. By learning and exploring our attachments to place we can illuminate the interconnectivity of all people, species, and experiences to remind ourselves of our rootedness to and reliance on our surroundings in order to foster a deeper mindfulness of place, and more meaningful relationships to each other.
Process
The Place Where Project evolved out of many explorations of place, hundreds of questions, rich discussions, and talks with mentors. Learn more about our process here.
