Creative Wellness at Home - Week 6
How would you map your neighbourhood?
In Week 1, we shared our first mindful walking activity. This week, we’re reflecting on how our local neighbourhoods make us feel, and how we experience places in different ways. Then we will map our experience of the walk - an emotional map of your local neighbourhood.
Let’s get started with a mindful walk
Go for a walk.
Pause and take a few deep breaths before you start. Feel your mind and your heart open as you step outside and breathe in the air.
As you begin to move, allow your thoughts and feelings come and go. Start to observe what’s around you. The street, the trees, the birds, the cars. Notice what’s natural, what is built, what is moving, and what is still.
Tune in all of your senses to absorb all the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings that are experienced.
Notice if your emotions change at any specific locations. Maybe seeing happy children at the playground makes you feel nostalgic, or maybe you feel sad when you see an abandoned building. Take note of those feelings and where they are felt on your walk.
We all experience our environments in different ways. Think about what your neighbourhood means to you and how different places make you feel.
What do you love about where you live? What do you think could improve?
Draw a memory map of your walking experience
Maps represent spaces and places. But we all have unique experiences and connections to our environments and communities. Think about what your neighbourhood means to you and how different places make you feel. These feelings deserve to be mapped too.
Grab a sheet of paper and start to draw a map of your walk from memory.
Close your eyes and imagine taking the walk again.
What places or things stood out?
What makes your neighbourhood special to you?
Start by drawing the most important landmarks or interest points on your walk. Then connect them with lines representing your walk.
You can mix drawings with words or patterns. Your map does not need to accurate. Think about the sounds, colours, textures, and smells that you experienced on your walk. Can you draw those into the map somehow?
Use different colours, shapes, dots, and lines to represent feelings and emotions.
Let the map reflect your own unique experience of your walk.
This article from the Hand Drawn Map Association might help to guide you. Check out more maps from the Hand Drawn Map Association, and you may even want to send a copy of your map to the HDMA to archive!
This map was one of hundreds of maps published by Bloomberg’s CityLab last year that reflected readers’ experiences of their homes and local spaces during the pandemic.
Marta writes, “Often, while walking towards the park, I dream that I might turn the corner and find my Italian home there.”
Don’t forget to send us your maps, photos or drawings.
Send them to creativeresilienceinnerwest@gmail.com. Let us know how you feel about your neighbourhood!
Want more mindful walking? Check out our Week 1 activity.
Drawing our journeys - a Mindful Drawing activity
Check out this mindful drawing activity from the National Portrait Gallery in the United Kingdom to hear more about how walking can inspire mindfulness and creativity.
Competition reminder!
A reminder that our creative competition is open until the end of October. Send us any of your creative works for the chance to win a Coles Myer gift card.
See the full details on how to enter here.
We hope you are enjoying the activities!
The Creative Wellness at Home project is brought to you by Community and Cultural Connections Inc (CCCi) and funded with support from Inner West Council.