“We cannot save what we do not love.” Stephen Jay Gould

This work is grounded in the idea that cultivating a bond with the places enriches our well-being and inspires a natural desire to care for and protect places. This helps both people and places thrive.

Whether you’re looking to enrich your personal life, engage visitors at a historic site, or create meaningful programs for your community, a sense of place approach can help you connect more deeply to yourself and the places where you live, work, visit, and play.

Rooted in years of in-the-field experience, The Sense of Place and Story framework offers practical tools to help individuals, organizations, and communities find their sense of place stories.

The Philosophy

At the heart of this work is what I call the Soulful Stewardship Method.

This method holds a simple but powerful idea:

Personal sense of place stories create meaningful connections, which lead to caring, and ultimately, inspire stewardship.

The entry point to finding your stories is through exploring your sense of place, which includes your feelings, your knowledge and your experiences.

Defining a Sense of Place

While there are many definitions for what a sense of place means, from working with this concept for decades, my definition is that a sense of place is a personal meaning-making process.

It’s an ongoing journey of connecting and getting to know places, and to know yourself through experiences that help you uncover the meaning places hold in your life.

In essence, your sense of place is as unique as you are.

Your sense of place is that feeling you get when a place resonates with you in some way. It comes from the intersections between what you know about it and what you feel.

Your sense of place is based on deeply personal experiences combined with a lifelong process of learning, discovery, and meaning-making.

In a nutshell: Factual Knowledge + Personal Experience = Your Sense of Place

Background: Story leads to Stewardship

As a touring songwriter, I frequently witnessed rapid changes in the American landscape—losses of open spaces and vibrant downtowns—and felt compelled to address these challenges. I wanted to inspire people to uncover their stories about places that have significance for them. I began sharing a writing process that helped evoke personal stories about places that matter to people, from their past and present. What began as workshops and concerts for land trusts and similar organizations evolved into collaborations with sites dedicated to sharing places and stories with the broader public.

My teaching process then expanded further, encompassing training for interpreters at National Parks, museums, historic sites, and cultural destinations. It also grew to include work with the tourism industry, promoting thoughtful growth that values the unique essence of places while protecting their character and significance.

Below, you’ll find an introduction to my approach, which incorporates the Soulful Stewardship Philosophy, A Sense of Place Approach to Interpretation, Tourism and Storytelling, and an overview of my Sense of Place and Story Framework.

Healing the Disconnect

In today’s world, many people feel disconnected from where they are. They often don’t see themselves in the stories or histories of a place where they live or visit. They might have grown up somewhere else, and might not know much about a place. Without knowing a place, they feel like they do not belong. I aim to shift that and work towards helping people find meaningful sense of place connections wherever they are.

For individuals, this approach will help you find, develop and express your stories.

For organizations and communities, this approach offers a fresh way to engage audiences, helping them to connect emotionally and intellectually to the places you care for, making your mission more impactful.

Interpretation, Tourism and Storytelling

A sense of place approach to interpretation and tourism means rethinking and expanding your idea of what you consider to be your site or place, your visitor motivations and your engagement techniques. This shift allows a different approach to program design, coming at what you offer from a different perspective. As a result you’ll be able to create programs and offer experiences that are more relevant for today’s visitors, while also being solidly rooted in timeworn traditions and skills.

A sense of place approach to writing and storytelling embraces the idea that places hold stories. By exploring the rich intersections of self, place, nature, history, and culture within us, we uncover fertile ground for creativity and expression. This perspective encourages us to see both our external surroundings and internal landscapes with greater depth and breadth. In doing so, it brings a richness, meaning, and resonance to our lives that counteracts the fast-paced, transactional nature of modern living.

The Process

My approach to sense of place stories and programs starts with finding and developing your own sense of place stories. It includes deepening your understanding of the layers of time and story that make up a place, and then integrating your ideas into stories or programs. It includes developing your skills and mastering your craft. Your outcome can be to share your stories with people you know or to make an impact with others from around the world.

Developed and honed through decades of experience, my framework is filled with practical and creative tools and skill-building techniques to help individuals and organizations uncover and share the stories that matter most.

Here are the four key areas of the Sense of Place and Story Framework:

Let’s Work Together!

Whether you’re looking to enrich your personal connection to places or create innovative programs that engage and inspire others, Erica’s Sense of Place and Story Framework provides a powerful way forward. Together, we can uncover the stories that help you, your community or your organization thrive while making a meaningful impact on the world.