MARCH 8, 3PM
In continuing our effort to revitalize Main Street, our next workshop is one which all those who want to reminisce about the past will enjoy.
Memories are important even if the complexion of Main Street will never be that again. Scholar Anne Mosher will lead a program entitled “Mapping Granville Memories: A Community Storytelling Workshop” at 3 PM, March 8, at the Pember, 33 West Main Street in Granville.
Buildings, street corners, schools, churches, parks and trees; all can be “places” – sites that get woven into the fabric of daily routine and imbued with personal and public memories. Unfortunately, such places sometimes become taken for granted. If that happens, memories fade, places become endangered, and the genius loci – the general locale’s “spirit of place” – suffers.
How can we retrieve and share memories about local places before they are lost? Which ones seem to be essential to a healthy genius loci? What are the stories specific to them? We are hosting this “cognitive mapping” workshop so we can find out.
During this three hour program, participants get to draw and explain to workshop partner a personal sketch map of their neighborhood. As one speaks, the other listens, takes notes, and asks questions. Then, the roles are reversed. Each pair is then guided through tasks that culminate in the collaborative writing of stories about valued places within the community. All participants can then give readings of their stories in this small group setting, accompanied by a background Power Point slide show (that the facilitator prepares while the pairs are writing). After discussing themes and issues that seem to tie together, we will discuss what the author-artist could do next with this creative work. Is it suitable for a public reading to a larger audience, and exhibition, a website, a publication?
By the end of the workshop, participants will have identified valued places within their community, told and heard stories about them, pondered, laughed and perhaps even cried over the condition of genius loci. All this, while encountering firsthand the idea the cartography can be both mapmaking science and emotion-laden, life and place enriching art.
With participants’ permission, this may stay on display in the Pember and/or reproduced and kept in our local history section.
The group size is best kept to 15-20 people so please call the Pember 642-2525 and sign up ahead.