Sensory mapping is our world map: a way of representing spaces through everyday experience. It does not try to replace a geographic map. It makes visible the routes people take, their habits and memories, symbolic borders, the places they love and the places they avoid, what is missing and what is possible.
The workshop can begin without any existing map. Each person draws the places that matter, how far away they feel, the paths they take, their landmarks and the emotions attached to them. The individual maps are then brought together to compose a collective legend and to reveal the many ways of living in the same place.
Mapping is also a tool for inquiry. It helps choose a route, prepare a walk, locate photographs, link a story to a place or identify people to meet. By connecting space, lived experience and storytelling, it gives structure to the project’s other practices.
In neighborhoods undergoing change, we often work across three timeframes: the past, the present and possible futures. A map can bring back a community facility that has disappeared, show how a concrete deck is used today, or represent the changes people would like to see. It opens up an accessible space for discussion, where drawing, symbols and speech can complement writing.
The final map can stay very free-form or take a more conventional shape. The group chooses the colors, signs, words, scale and reading order. It learns that a map is never neutral: it puts some realities forward, leaves others aside, and asserts a point of view on space.
The maps can become a large exhibition map, a guide for a walking tour, a tool for community consultation, a page in a booklet or the backbone of a film. They let participants share a collective reading without erasing the contradictions between different experiences.
the workshop in pictures
photos: the workshop participants and the mOst team
