Philosophy and Approach
The Sense of Place and Story Framework
In today’s fast-paced world, we’re all searching for something deeper.
Many of us feel disconnected—from ourselves, our surroundings, and each other. We pass through landscapes, but rarely feel the power that places and their stories hold. I call it an “epidemic of disconnect.”
It’s not enough to just visit or live in a place.
We want something more:
meaning, connection, and belonging.
We can heal this disconnect and live more rooted to where we are and who we are.
For some, that means slowing down, listening, and reconnecting—with our surroundings and ourselves.
For others, it’s about inspiring people by crafting narratives that move them, designing programs that inspire action, and creating experiences that matter.
Whether you want to design visitor programs or develop a creative project, I offer tools, techniques and a framework to guide your way.
For over two decades, I've worked with parks, museums, communities, and individuals across the country to help inspire deeper connections between people and place, and I'm excited to share it here with you.
The Foundation
Everything I offer is rooted in one simple truth:
Personal stories of connection to places, inspire caring for places.
These stories can help people and places thrive, and finding them is what my work is all about. It starts with sensing and finding your sense of place.
How This Work Is Shaped
This work is about finding sense of place stories and cultivating a sense of place. I think about sense of place as an ongoing meaning-making process—one that evolves over time. It begins when you start paying attention to the intersections between what you know
and what you feel about a place.
Places Hold Layers of Story
Places hold layers of time and perspective. We also carry memories and experiences within us, and when we pause to reflect on those moments, they can take on meaning. From reflection, meaning emerges—and stories begin to form. This is where knowledge and experience become story.
Sense of Place Stories Hold Meaning
By recalling places where you’ve had experiences that deepened your connection to yourself and to a place—and reflecting on what those moments mean—something new begins to take shape. Reflection puts in motion a shift that moves us from place knowledge to place relationship. Because it’s one thing to understand a place; it’s another to feel you have a relationship with it.
Healing the Disconnect
This shift changes everything. It changes how we understand where we are and who we are. It changes how we think about what we want to write, share, and create. It changes how we visit places and how we relate to the ones that surround us.
Feeling connected to places from our past and present is what it means to have a sense of place. These connections offer a way to heal the disconnect we find—in our lives and in the world.
How This Work Began
This work first emerged while I was traveling as a full-time touring songwriter. I would often return to places I loved, only to find them dramatically changed. And I wanted to do something to slow that trend if I could.
In concerts, when I would sing about my own relationships with places, people would come up afterward and share their stories — about places they’d loved and lost, and places they’d loved and saved.
I saw how powerful remembering sense of place stories could be for inspiring connection, caring, and belonging.
That led me to create workshops for communities and nonprofits, which helped people uncover their stories of place. Participants always left feeling more connected — to themselves, to their surroundings, and to one another. These grew into my interpretive training for parks and museums and other sites, as well as into programs for writers, creatives, and communities.
These programs evolved into the Sense of Place Story Framework and my Sense of Place and the Art of Interpretation training that I offer at sites across the country for parks, museums, historic sites, and more.
How This Work Unfolds
During all my programs—from training and keynotes to community engagement and creative mentoring—I use my Sense of Place Story Framework to guide the journey.
While each experience is shaped by its specific goals and context, the underlying structure follows a shared route.
Through a sequenced set of practices and tools participants begin to see themselves, their stories, their surroundings, and their work from new perspectives.
This progression from discovery to connection, helps people get oriented, explore what matters, and reflect on what is taking shape.
From there, we work together to turn ideas into stories, programs, experiences or other work.
Navigating the Process
This work moves between two connected dimensions of inner and outer work. No matter what your work is in the outer work, this work will increase your capacity to do that work in the world.
The inner work — reflection, grounding, and clarifying your relationship to place, story, and purpose
The outer work — shaping that understanding into stories, programs, experiences, or creative work
The Sense of Place Story Compass
To stay oriented through this learning process, I use a compass model with four core areas to consider as you travel. It’s not a prescriptive formula, but a way to navigate the journey with intention and clarity.
Knowledge of Self — stories, connections, insight
Knowledge of Place — layers of time and perspective
Craft of Story & Meaning-Making — reflection, integration, meaning
Craft of Engagement — connection and impact
When people engage in this work, something shifts. Their work becomes more grounded and meaningful. This shifts both how the work is created, the intent behind the work, and how it is received.
What’s Possible
Whether you work in interpretation designing programs for visitors, or in communities to help people connect to the nature, history and culture that surrounds them or you want to deepen your own sense of place and the stories you tell, the programs I offer that come from my Sense of Place Story Framework will shift the way you work, and think about the work you do. Connection deepens, caring increases and action follows.
Interpretive professionals design programs that move beyond information delivery into meaning-making experiences visitors remember.
Explore Trainings →Community stakeholders offer experiences that strengthen collective identity and inspire stewardship.
Explore Community Engagement →Writers and creatives discover stories that resonate because they are rooted in place and meaning.
Explore Programs Offered →Tourism and heritage organizations create experiences that bring a true sense of place to life.
Explore Keynotes →
Ready to start your journey?
If you'd like to explore what's possible, I'd love to hear what resonates.
