Cultural Mapping and Connecting with Place

About

Cultural mapping as a methodology and paradigm holds tremendous power to create conditions for change by bringing communities together in new ways to co-create new knowledge and understanding. At its core, cultural mapping aims to make visible the ways that local cultural assets, stories, practices, relationships, memories, and rituals constitute places as meaningful locations, while bringing a diverse range of stakeholders into conversation about the cultural dimensions and potentials of a place. With the design of cultural mapping projects tightly linked to local needs, issues, and aspirations, cultural mapping practices vary widely and the field is characterized by a high degree of experimentation. Its interdisciplinarity perspectives, techniques, and processes emphasize participatory approaches, which require an ethics of care with the communities engaged in these projects.

This four-day intensive summer school offers a unique opportunity to learn how to design and conduct cultural mapping projects, enabling participants to enhance their knowledge on cultural mapping approaches and processes, gain skills applying cultural mapping techniques in practice, and examine ethics of care in this community-engaged work. Cultural mapping approaches will address cultural assets and resources, both tangible and intangible; heritage and history; and living narratives and voices of place. Application areas to be discussed in the summer school include: community-based cultural and creative tourism, cultural planning, local territorial planning / strategic planning, and engaged social change working with vulnerable communities. This is a unique opportunity to learn from internationally acclaimed scholars and practitioners, including Nancy Duxbury and Will Garrett-Petts. The summer school will include daily visits, learning seminars, and hands-on workshops where participants will actively learn about and engage in cultural mapping while addressing a place-specific real-life local development issue.

This CES Summer School will take place in Caldas da Rainha, a UNESCO Creative City in the area of Crafts and and Folk Arts, with an Art Nouveau and rich artistic history. The course will have various tangible outputs and culminate in an artistic public presentation of the findings to the local population, curated by the participants in collaboration with SILOS Contentor Criativo and Destino Caldas, Caldas da Rainha.

Thematic area(s) of the course:

Cultural mapping processes and methodologies

Art-informed cultural mapping

Place-based meanings

Cultural/artistic heritage

Creative tourism

Dimensions of care with vulnerable communities

 

Participants

The summer school is designed to discuss and practice a variety of cultural mapping techniques and approaches at an introductory level, for participants with limited experience with community-based and cultural mapping. We welcome graduate and PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, local cultural planners and policy-makers, and practitioners in the cultural and tourism sectors as well as individuals working in and with communities in regeneration/revitalization processes. Participants should have a good level of English as the Summer School will be held in English and group work will be an essential component of the course.

 

Registration fee:

Earlybird fees (until June 1):

€190 – Students

€230 – Regular

After June 1: €260

 

What does the fee cover?

The fee includes all materials, sessions, visits, coffee breaks, and lunches (four days).

The fee does not cover accommodation or transportation.

(Special accommodation options and rates available at ‘Getting to Caldas da Rainha and Accommodation’)

Maximum number of registrations: 25

Minimum number of registrations: 15

Coordination team | Nancy Duxbury, in collaboration with Sílvia Silva, Tiago Castro, and Fiona Bakas

Activity within the research projects:
CREATOUR: Creative Tourism Destination Development in Small Cities and Rural Areas (CES)

Cultural Mapping, Planning and Impact Assessment for Sustainable and Just Urban Development (CES)

Cultural Mapping the Opioid Crisis (Thompson Rivers University, Canada)