Collective Cartography is a community storytelling project about place, memory, and imagination.
We’re inviting people of all ages to explore their relationship to Ashland by working into a shared, hand-drawn map template. Some maps are literal. Others are emotional, symbolic, or abstract.
The goal isn’t accuracy. It’s telling a story through image.
Project Context
The project is sponsored by the Institute for Applied Sustainability and led by the Oregon Writing Project at SOU in collaboration with local teachers, artists, students, and community partners. It lives at the intersection of art, writing, and place-based storytelling.
Participants range from kindergarten classrooms to senior citizens. Each map becomes part of a growing archive of lived experience. Individual stories join in a collective story.
-
We acknowledge that we live, work, and create our storymaps on the traditional, ancestral, and present-day homelands of the Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla, Shasta, Takelma, Cow Creek Umpqua, and Modoc peoples, as well as the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. Our work in environmental literacies—to teach, learn, map, and tell stories—becomes a living practice of care when it cultivates relationships and a sense of belonging across communities. Mapping as storytelling includes the shared histories and enduring knowledge of these Native nations.
May your commitment to this land and its waters continue to be guided by relationship, reflection, and the responsibility that comes with being a guest on these homelands.
-
How to participate.
Step 1 — Get the Map
Download the Ashland template or pick one up at a partner location.
Step 2 — Create Your Map
Use the map however you’d like. Draw, collage, paint, stitch, annotate, or layer imagery that reflects your relationship to this place.
There’s no right way to do it. It doesn’t need to look polished. It just needs to feel true.
You can work alone, with friends, in classrooms, or join in through one of our community workshops.
Step 3 — Add Your Artist Statement
Include a brief artist statement (75–125 words) that gives us a window into your map — the memories, ideas, or experiences behind it.
Step 4 — Submit
Upload, email, or drop off your finished work.
Project Leads
-
Erick Gordon
Bio
-
Fawn Canady
Dr. Canady is an Assistant Professor of Literacy in SOU’s School of Education. She is Co-Director of the Oregon Writing Project and a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Applied Sustainability.