Co-creation of stories of place
‘The local and regional scale is not only the scale at which we can act most effectively to preserve biological diversity, it is also the scale at which we can preserve cultural diversity and indigenous, local wisdom as expressions of living in long-term connection with the uniqueness of any given locality.’
David Wahl, Sensitivity to scale, uniqueness of place and local culture
In our last lab note, we explored prototyping street detectorism. We found that the process had so far encouraged curiosity in Dudley’s High Street, interactions between strangers, collection and creation of maps and data, and connections with other time rebel experiments. This led us to the following intentions for the next prototyping stage:
💭 We want to create opportunities for people to build generous and trusting relationships, so we will invite new street detectorism enthusiasts to connect through using our tools and activities whenever they like, sharing their findings in the lab or online, and coming together to humanise each other’s data.
💭 Street detectorism will help us look for the historical context, and move away from ahistorical work by layering this with deep time e.g. geology, the industrial revolution, the British empire.
💭 We will bring these layers and range of data together in relationship with the rest of the ecosystem to help us reveal patterns and insights that inform our journey to a kinder, more creative and connected High Street.
💭 These insights will help to inform regenerative future experiments rooted in historical and future contexts, and help us to avoid short term or ahistorical quick solutions.
Deep time street detectorism
Street detectorism is an experiment for people to get to know the High Street; to stop, use all their senses and unearth stories. People have been exploring the High Street with a clue to focus their senses, and expand their perceptions of the High Street. They’ve been plotting their findings onto maps, and together they’ve been revealing and sharing stories and wisdom of the High Street.
What if we introduced deep time thinking into street detectorism?
‘DEEP TIME: This enables us to engage with our place in the epic geological history of the universe. Deep time work can foster a profound sense of awe for the richness of life on earth. This profoundly scientific perspective can leave people with a sense of reverence and the miraculous.’
Beatrice Pembroke & Ella Saltmarshe, The Long Time
Jo revisited her Do Fest learning lab note to consider the links between mapping, reflection and taking action for stewardship of the High Street. She was reminded of lessons shared by First Nation Elders at an RSA Ancient Ancestors / Earth Stewards lecture she had attended, and wondered what we might learn from Songlines. This led to a series of questions that street detectorists have been using to gain insights from their maps. These questions have so far situated street detectorists in deep time and inspired reflections and new narratives.
Connecting street detectorism with the ecosystem
We realised that to honour our intentions for street detectorism, we needed to bring it in relationship with the rest of our ecosystem. When Lorna and I were planning for our first session convening street detectorists, Lorna had the idea of Stories of Place, which, we discovered, unintentionally laps with Regenesis Group’s Story of Place:
‘Stories enable individuals and groups to grasp and share complex wholes and collectively imagine the future differently. They have been used throughout human history to maintain a culture’s integrity and connection to place over millennia (song lines, epic poems, myths, etc.). Research shows that the human memory is story based, not data based, and that stories are fundamental to how people learn and organize what they know…
The Story of Place as a context serves multiple purposes. First, history has shown that a society will not sustain the will needed to make and maintain the needed changes, day after day, without evoking the spirit of caring that comes from a deep connection to place. Second, discovering the story of a place enables us to understand how living systems work in that place, and provides greater intelligence about how humans can then align themselves with that way of working to the benefit of all. Finally, the Story of Place provides a framework for an ongoing learning process that enables humans to co-evolve with their environment.’
Street detectorism has already revealed lots of stories of Dudley High Street, but it’s not the only experiment doing this. Stories of the High Street have been found through time rebels countermapping Black infrastructure (Afro Histories Dudley & Black-led Creatives Network), inviting people to write and gift poems to shops (Poetry of Place), revealing stories of nature and art (More-than-human High Street), and unearthing memories of Growing Up in Dudley. These are stories of the present, with some revealing stories from the recent past.
What if we were to layer these with stories from past experiments, stretch further back in deep time, and make connections to other parts of the ecosystem?
‘We need to unearth the old stories that live in place and begin to create new ones, for we are storymakers, not just storytellers. All stories are connected, new ones woven from the threads of the old…’
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants
‘Create circles, not lines — create less hierarchy and more dialogue, inclusion and empowerment.
Choose critical connections over critical mass — Quality over quantity. Focus on creating critical and authentic relationships to support mutual adaptation and evolution over time.
Reckon with the past to build the future — Meaningfully acknowledge the histories, injustice, innovations, and victories of spaces and places before new work begins. Reckon with the past as a means of healing, building trust, and deepening understanding of self and others.’
Cultivating a lake
‘In many Indigenous ways of knowing, time is not a river, but a lake in which the past, the present, and the future exist.’
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants
We are collectively creating a treasure chest of stories from experiments on Dudley High Street that people can use as a well of inspiration to co-create Stories of Place and future experiments.
Rather than seeing these stories from different times in a linear way (in a timeline) we can look at these stories together, in one big ‘lake’, so we can start to make connections.
‘In an Andean understanding of time, the past, present and future are directly interconnected and happening in the same moment….
objects, people and places… transcend time, bringing a living past into the present to influence and inform the future.’
There are a lot of stories to digest in one go so we’ve been experimenting with how we can make this lake of stories visible and sortable so it doesn’t get too overwhelming. We’ve been trying to create this lake in Airtable; an online and publicly accessible database platform that helps you to view and sort all the stories gathered so far in different ways.
🔎 You can browse Dudley High Street Stories of Place gathered so far as a list or gallery. If you would like to explore these in more detail, please get in touch.
Convening Stories of Place
Since November 2021, street detectorists and time rebels have been convening on Open Project Nights to explore stories of place and develop ideas of how these stories can be lifted and celebrated through new narratives and experiments.
“A genuine creative fizzing of ideas and it was particularly inspiring for me to be amongst people who my usual life in planning would not necessarily lead me to encounter…everything I’ve seen, heard and read about what is going on fascinates me and drives my curiosity.”
Fellow storymaker
Already we’ve had Kirren Channa, Birmingham School of Architecture and Design Masters student and time rebel, convene curious people to share their imagination and develop stories from previous stories on Dudley High Street. They collectively created a new story, creatively archiving nature on Dudley High Street:
Jasmine Lawrence, another architecture Masters students from ERA, was inspired by data humanism from our first stories of place session, and returned with tapestries of High Street stories:
Rick Sanders and his creative writing group, Connect Dudley, have also been delving into the stories of place lake to inspire new stories and poems.
‘I smell tiny things
Missing creatures lost between the floor boards
Wasting away
Decaying colour
Moving
Relaxing as time passes’
Rick Sanders
Already we are seeing stalagmites of imagination and creativity growing from Dudley High Street:
👋 Over the next few months, we will be meeting on the second Wednesday of each month to prototype ideas for stories of place, which will be celebrated in June. You are welcome to join us and hop over to our Open Project Night page for details on how to join.
