Sketch your Childhood

One of my favourite new magazine finds is on site, which aims to “democratise and widen the discussion of the production of space.” It’s published in Alberta and I found Issue #19 on the newsstand at the Atlantic News in Halifax last summer.

At the back of that issue there’s a short piece by Joseph Heathcott, Associate Professor or Urban Studies at The New School, about an exercise he gives his new students. He writes, in part:

One of the first exercises that I have students undertake is to draw a cognitive map of their childhood neighbourhood with key landmarks — in under ten minutes. This exercise introduces the relationship between memory, place, and time.

I was intrigued enough by the exercise to do it myself. Here’s what I came up with in 10 minutes of my neighbourhood village of Carlisle, Ontario, where I lived from 1972 to 1985 (click for a larger version):

I’d be interested to see what your sketch looks like — if you’re up for it, just scan (or take a picture or) your sketch and upload it to Flickr with tag mychildhoodneighbourhood and leave a comment here.