Today we met at the LEAF allotment. Despite heavy rain in the morning by the time we met at the site at 10 the skies were clear for us. Whilst Diane and John, a local grower, got the tea on we marked our routes to the allotment on the map.
I then explain today's activity to the group. We were to move around the allotment as a group at random each creating a sensory 'map' of the site. I had a series of questions for the group and each time we stopped I asked the group to make observations based on these. The purpose of the questions and the exercise itself was to make us observe things in a different way and to make us more aware of our environment as we moved around it. The map could be a literal map of the site or it could be a line that traced the path that we took. This idea seemed abstract at first but the group took to it with gusto.We took it in turns to decide where we would travel to next on the site. Initially picking 'left or right' and then exploring areas of interest to people.
Once we had completed our journey we sat down to discuss our maps and drink some more tea. It was very interesting to see how differently everyone's maps turned out. Jo's map was very technical and accurate, Eileen worked on several pages recording what she saw, Ian, Diane and I all made flowing lines featuring the different observations that loosely resembled the paths we took.
These are some of the questions I asked:
Here are our maps:
The group commented that having to observe certain things made them look at things differently. Diane was a bit shocked by how many man made materials she could list when asked to, she had always thought that the site was all natural.
Here are the comments from the day:
