Uniting people with place

One of the most important tasks of education is to develop a cultural dimension that provides knowledge with a practical framework for people to locate themselves firmly in place and time. At school, the topic is �youth citizenship�. At home it is �global citizenship�. In both situations the aim is to make statements of current ideas linking �what people do� with �where they live�, �how they connect with local and global natural resources� and �their origins in a cosmic scheme of things�

A contemporary stimulus is Simon Sharma's book 'Landscape and Memory' which he says was built around moments of recognition when a place suddenly exposes its connections to an ancient and peculiar vision of the forest, mountain or river.

An historical stimulus is one of Aby Warburg's last and unaccomplished projects; he died in 1929. 'Atlas' refers to the German meaning of it as "Album", "printed collection" or 'catalogue'. Warburg used these sets of images which he rearranged to connect ideas that were embedded in the images for presentation as lecture/slideshows. Today we call these flexible arrangements �mindmaps�.

The aim is to demonstrate with mindmaps how selfknowledge can be gained by recognising the importance of having a day to day built environment where we feel at home. It is from here that we can define our place on planet Earth by adopting behaviours to change cultural habits that are destroying the planet's self-correcting ecology.

http://managing-natural-beauty.wikispaces.com/

http://www.culturalecology.info/urbanculture/

http://www.biodiversity.ecoworld.co.uk/bef/

http://sites.google.com/site/islandsofsustainability