Sense of Place

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Sense of Place
Ian Convery Tom Dutson School of Natural
Resources, UCLAN

• ICU-C

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Background context

• Aims of project 1 year project to identify if,
  and how, elements in the cultural landscape of
  upland Northern England (3 LEADER areas) might
  contribute to community sustainability
• Action Research grassroots community-based
  heritage/cultural projects - Ecomusuem
• Project team Project funded by LEADER, managed
  through ICU-C, project team includes Newcastle
  University UCLAN
• Sense of Place related concepts Cultural
  Landscape Ecomuseum

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Cultural Landscape

• Working definition very broad
• Tangible things like farm buildings, field
  patterns, dry stone walls, historic sites,
  churches, industrial sites, rivers, vernacular
  architecture, woodland, wildlife habitats, etc.
• But also intangible stuff like dress, local
  accent/dialect, traditions, customs, local shows
  and fairs, music, dance, local myths and stories,
  local history, religion

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UNESCO Cultural Landscapes

• The ways humans have changed and been changed
  by the natural world
• Intentionally created landscapes - made for
  aesthetic reasons, such as gardens and parks,
  often designed in association with monuments
• Continuing organically evolving landscapes
• Others, such as mountains, lakes, cliffs or
  forests, have been endued by human beings with a
  special spiritual meaning

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community
people
Landscape
tradition
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Sense of Place

• Large body of academic literature connected with
  Sense of Place geography, environmental
  management, environmental psychology, social
  anthropology

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Sense of Place

• Sense of place is perhaps most simply considered
  as an overarching concept which subsumes other
  concepts describing relationships between human
  beings and spatial settings
• Shamai (1991)
•  
• Shamai, S, (1991) Sense of place An empirical
  measurement. Geoforum, Vol.22, pp.347-358.

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Sense of Place

• Three contexts to examine development of sense
  of place residential status, age stage and
  development of adult pair bond.
• If a person resides in a place for many years,
  particularly if that person is raised there, then
  he or she often develops a sense of place,
  feeling at home and secure there, with feelings
  of belonging for the place being one anchor for
  his or her identity.
• Hay (19986)
• Hay, R. (1998) Sense of place in developmental
  context, in Journal of Environmental Psychology,
  Vol.18

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Sense of Place

• There is poetry to be written, and history and
  plays and stories, and all the material is there
  in the depth of peoples memory and emotion and
  observation and humour and imagination
• Peacocke (198937)
• Peacocke, M. (1989) Longtown. A Sense of Place.
  Charles Thurnam Sons Ltd.

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Sense of Place

• It is about how you think, feel and behave in a
  particular place can be about connection,
  rootedness and aesthetic appreciation of a
  particular geographical setting/cultural
  landscape
• Jorgensen Steadman (2006316)
• Jorgensen, B. Steadman, R. (2006) a
  comparative analysis of predictors of sense of
  place dimensions Attachment to, dependence on,
  and identification of lake shore properties.
  Journal of Environmental Management, Vol. 79,
  pp.316-327.

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Focus groups

• March 2006, FGs held in Penrith, Alston Belford
• Between 8 12 respondents per FG
• Purposefully sampled relevant agencies and
  organisations
• We recognise that many of you have expertise and
  professional interest in this area - this evening
  were very much interested in your perceptions
  and feelings about where you live and what sense
  of place means to you

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Data Analysis

• FGs taped and transcribed
• Data analysed using grounded theory - constant
  comparison method - each item compared with the
  rest of the data to establish and refine
  analytical categories (Pope et al., 2000).
• Data were stored in Atlas Ti

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Coded transcripts
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Data Analysis

• Three key analytical categories of
• Community
• Landscapes
• Production Systems
• Underpinned by substantiated and open codes

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mutually constructive
Rural change
community networks
Selling cultural landscape
Temporal interconnections
community layers
Trade-offs
community conflicts
community scale
reciprocity
generic SoP
Rural transport
interpreters of landscape
dislocated cultural landscape
Sharing stories
Social spaces - location
benefits of tourism
identities
Traditions and heritage
Bureaucracy
Scourge of tourism
Community
developing SoP
Layered landscapes
consubstantiality
Spiritual history
Production Systems
relocating SoP
Landscape
rural idyll
cultural markers
Tyranny of protected areas
productive landscape
people - place production systems
Totemic landscapes
Ecomuseum
'real' cultural landscape
Sense of space
Intergenerational young people
close to nature
evolving cultural landscape
Isolation
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Data Analysis Productive Landscapes

• It's changed from a working community quarry
  mining, miners, foresters, farmers to an area
  where people retire
• There is that tension betweenpeople wanting to
  build businesses up and have jobs and actually
  work for themselves and people that want to
  retire and keep it
• I think that we've stood still in our whole
  attitude to looking after and managing our
  landscapewe've tended to wrap it in muslin
  instead of working out ways of taking it
  forward.

 
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Data Analysis Evolving Landscapes

• On the board back in church there are the names
  of all the incumbents from 1150 to my name, which
  has been squeezed on the bottom, and I don't know
  there's 25 or so and there will probably be 25
  after me, so in that way I belong to the cultural
  landscape which is rooted in the past, and at the
  same time also involved in the future.

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Data Analysis Evolving Landscapes

• A few weeks ago we were out cycling on an old
  road used for droving cattle, I felt a strong
  connection to that landscape, the landscape is
  developing, there's a continuing evolution in
  that cultural landscape, because even though it's
  no longer for cattle, people like myself and
  other groups can enjoy it.

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Data Analysis Authentic Landscapes

• Sometimes you're driving through a nice little
  village, and you see this disgusting red brick
  thrown up in 20 minutes house, and just think
  that it's just so incongruous.
•  

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Data Analysis Layered Community

• What I think is interesting is to divide
  up...is that this might look like one community,
  it's not it's several communities, layers of
  people.
•  
•  

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Data Analysis Developing SoP

• Its something a bloke said in the pub "look
  the scenery's not very much, it's always cold,
  there's no bloody jobs and the jobs that are, are
  badly paid, you know, if it wasn't for the people
  there'd be nothing it wouldn't be anything, it'd
  be nowt".
• Its to do with rootedness and time, you do
  need some time and an openness almost as an
  incomer to grow those roots and to develop those
  feelings.

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Data Analysis Developing SoP

• Its nice to go into the shop and be recognised
  you know hello, nice to see you and have a bit
  of a chat
• The pub closedquite a few years ago, and it
  was the last facility in the village and the last
  meeting place, it wasnt a very good pub mind!
  But at least you could go in and have a bit craic
  with people so theres a lot of people that live
  there, you dont see, you dont see them out.

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Data Analysis Developing SoP

• Soon after moving up here, my wife had a bad
  riding accident and was unconscious for five, six
  days and the children were to sort out at school
  and every evening as soon as I got home there was
  a knock on the door and there was somebody with a
  casserole or an apple pie, all the rest of it.
  Its just that sort of place, and of course you
  accept the generosity and then of course its
  incumbent on you to repay the generosity not for
  the same people necessarily but for somebody
  else. Thats what makes a community.

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Data Analysis Sharing Stories

• I think the biggest factor that gave me a sense
  of place was just people telling me stories about
  the place.
• You can feel it tumbling down, stories that
  people just happen to tell you, you're doing that
  thing, you're leaning on the gate and the old
  neighbours telling the new neighbours stuff.
• If I go and visit another area and if the
  locals welcome me and they tell me about the
  place, I love talking to visitors to tell them
  what little I know of our area but I love it when
  they react and obviously enjoy it

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Recommendations for continued research

• concept of sense of place potentially useful
  to frame community sustainability projects
• a number of existing, grassroots, initiatives
  which would link well to Sense of Place

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Recommendation 1

• first phaseestablished a broad appreciation of
  sense of place within 3 Leader areas - challenge
  is to focus down further
• to understand what sense of place consists of for
  individuals in a specific context (discrete
  geographical communities /or communities of
  interest)
• without this understanding, developing
  community-based heritage/cultural projects would
  be extremely difficult.
• recommend meetings within target communities in
  each Leader area to more fully consider
  relationship between community, cultural
  landscape sense of place.
• Triangulation of data between the first group
  meetings, informing later evaluative work with
  Sense of Place communities.

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Recommendation 2

• projects should be developed with sensitivity to
  the ideas around sense of place - an important
  aspect of community sustainability - sense of
  place is far too complex, embedded unique to
  people place for it to be created or
  strengthened as a specific project focus
• when designing implementing projects consider
  whether project activities enrich sense of place
• activities arrived at through participatory
  processes

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Theme (examples)
Issue/problem/opportunity
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Recommendation 3

• research has identified an apparent need to
  engage younger people in community activities
• recommend that projects should focus on young
  people, establishing links with, developing
  new meanings for, existing community traditions
  events.

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Recommendation 4

• Leader has considerable experience developing
  projects which involve local interpretation of
  cultural landscape for both locals visitors
• Examples Church Walks Project,(Somerset
  Leader), Farm Paths Project (Dorset
  Leader),The Wherryman's Way Project (Norfolk
  Broads Rivers Leader)
• group meetings identified willingness of people
  to be involved as interpreters of cultural
  landscape sense of place
• this level of interaction between local people
  visitors was seen as a key factor in providing a
  memorable visitor experience
• Sense of Place Project should consider
  adapting/evolving existing Leader work in this
  area.

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Ecomuseum from focus groups
A sense of uncertainly and confusion regarding
the term, whilst at the same time, a recognition
that the concept was potentially useful
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Taking things forward

• How can we take sense of place forward?
• What do you think?
• Over to Ian

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International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social
Sciences Sense of place and community
development in the northern English uplands Tom
Dutson Ian Convery