Community Maps, Places of Healing and Local Pilgrimage Destinations 

Community maps, places of healing and local pilgrimage destinations 

Maps have helped communities to make sense of their environment since the dawn of history. Today though, communities are finding the benefit of making their own maps – a process called collaborative map making, or re-mapping.

In Felixstowe, UK, their citizen science group is encouraging local people to create their own maps of beautiful local natural environments. The benefit of doing so is to develop the ways in which people of all ages are connecting to their local environment to improve their mental, physical and spiritual health.

These collaborative maps are not intended to replace official maps. Instead, they celebrate individual or shared experiences of places through the sights, sounds, fragrances, touch and taste experiences of those environments. Alongside maps which feature those five physical senses, collaborative maps also celebrate the therapeutic characteristics of a landscape. Those healing characteristics of natural environments can be thought of in at least five ways:

1. Physical characteristics – places where people feel safe, comfortable and calm.
2. Emotional characteristics – places which people trust and which will always be accessible to them.
3. Social characteristics – places where helpful, intimate and confidential conversations can take place
4. Psychological characteristics – places which help to boost self-esteem and dignity
5. Holistic characteristics – where the mind, body and spirit can feel restored.

The choice of how collaborative maps are developed is up to the individuals who make them. For Felixstowe artist Helen Newman, her passion for the local sounds from the natural world led her to produce this map:

In contrast, Helen’s friend Janette Brightman chose to map local fragrances which fascinate and stimulate her creative imagination:

A further example, completed by members of Felixstowe’s Citizen Science Group is more formal, but no less fascinating and rich in its appreciation of local people developing their affinity with their natural environment:

A further benefit of collaborative map making is to create strong links between the valuing of local environments and enhanced motivation to take part in community-based climate activism. 

Felixstowe has a strong recent history of climate activism dating back to their Climate Justice march on 2 July 2022. This link explains more.

The connections between valuing local environments, making maps of them, and then feeling motivated to get involved in community-based action is clear. In fact, walking, valuing and map making has identified five types of motivation for local people in the Felixstowe area to become involved in climate activism – and in finding a form of environmental healing from doing so.

Therapeutic motivations – Taking an active role in local climate activism is therapeutic. It makes us feel involved in creating local solutions. Felixstowe, for example, has developed its own climate justice agenda, using ideas developed by its community nature reserve from suggestions by local people:

• Scientific motivations – when people discover evidence of rising sea levels, the acidification of local seas, or other ecological evidence of climate change, they often incorporate that evidence into their maps, and then feel the further need to actively support local climate activism.
• Aesthetic reasons – walking and mapping local environments raises the profile of natural beauty in terms of its sights, sounds, fragrances, taste and touch – all of which are therapeutic and spiritually stimulating, but which further encourages climate activism.
• Community building – local people appreciate the additional connection between the valuing of their environment, expressed through their map making, and the need to encourage the whole community to get involved with climate activism.
• Therapeutic motivations – Taking an active role in local climate activism is therapeutic. It makes us feel involved in creating local solutions. Felixstowe, for example, has developed its own climate justice agenda, using ideas developed by its community nature reserve from suggestions by local people:

• Spiritual motivations – for local people of faith, there is often a clear link between their appreciation of the beauty of local environments, the gratitude they feel toward their chosen deity and a need to take part in civic activities such as climate activism.

Taking part in community-based climate activism can be a deeply therapeutic experience because it helps us to connect to a wider environment in practical and positive ways. It is empowering and relationship-building. It shows that every local micro-achievement can make a difference – particularly when it inspires others to get involved too. 

Felixstowe’s work on collaborative map making, therapeutic environments and local pilgrimage destinations will continue into the foreseeable future. To learn more, please visit the Facebook page of the Felixstowe Citizen Science Group