How do you identify the essence of a place?
I often find myself wondering: what gives a place its essence? What makes a place distinct and unique? How do you really know the character of a place? Honestly this stuff is on my mind a lot.
In search of inspiration I phoned some wise friends for advice. Here’s what they had to say.
Places are shaped by people
Curator and project manager
“The essence of a place is shaped by people. Their buildings and gardens, what they eat and how they interact. The smells and colours and pace of life. As a curator, I’m interested in how people mark their spaces. The murals, signage, street art and furniture that you encounter when you’re exploring. What stories are they telling in the landscape around them? I studied cultural geography at university and a module on murals was so inspiring. It led me down a path to working in museums, with a focus on community collecting. When I visit somewhere new, I love walking around, letting my senses absorb my surroundings. The essence of a place are the cultures it represents and the people who influence it.”
Places have layers of meaning
Place, Communities & Culture Consultant
“To identify the essence of a place, one must employ a multi-layered approach that goes beyond surface observation – place is both physical characteristics and temporal, embolised human experiences after all.
I have been honoured to have been invited to work with ‘place knowledge’, the wisdom that teaches us to listen to the land itself - its rhythms, patterns and stories. This means understanding the deep-time knowledge embedded in the landscape, and the intricate relationships between people and place that have evolved over generations. This deeper listening, combined with engaging diverse community members, particularly those whose voices are often overlooked, reveals crucial layers of meaning.
Through my trauma-informed practice, I've learned that critical to place practice is the need for safe spaces for difficult conversations about place experiences. For example, using techniques like sensory mapping, where residents share not just what they see, but what they feel, hear, and remember. This often reveals hidden patterns of trauma and resilience that profoundly shape a place's character.
The essence of a place is ultimately found in this intersection of physical space, collective memory, and lived experience. It's about understanding not just what a place is, but what it means to people - their fears, their hopes, their sense of belonging or disconnection.”
Places are rooted in people and stories
Head of Public Programmes, Black Country Living Museum
“At Black Country Living Museum, knowing what makes us uniquely Black Country is vital to our success. Our stories are rooted in our places, our history and our people.
The mantra “Real Lives, Real Stories” was our guiding light as we stepped into living memory and introduced our visitors to stories from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s in our new historic town. Speaking to the people and descendants of people who lived in, moved to and worked in the Black Country during this time has been key to the authenticity of our storytelling and our creation and re-creation of a sense of place and indeed time.
On entering our 29-acre site, our visitors describe a feeling of immersion. They hop on and hop off vintage buses and the smell of coal in the ranges reminds them of our coal mining heritage. The sound of metal bashing rings out across the site and they hear our characters speaking in Black Country dialect to each other. An enticing waft of fish and chips cooking entices them to experience a taste of the past.
Our visitors join our community for the day and when they leave, they’ll have discovered their own place within the Black Country.”
Place is a manifestation of a feeling
Artistic Director & CEO, Shubbak Festival
“Running Shubbak Festival has been a great teacher in how I understand place. From iconic venues to street corners to gallery spaces and market places, we are constantly on site visits to match artist with place. As a festival maker, my understanding of the essence of a place is the atmosphere it creates, the feeling it gives rise to the bodies that move through it. This may not make sense in a world so preoccupied with statistics and monitoring, but how do you even begin to measure or 'assess' a place? As an artist-leader who spends a lot of her time working with other artists, there is an understanding that the essence of a place is an embodied response -- a physical manifestation of a feeling. It's 'right' or 'not right' and could be everything in between. It could be 'almost right'. It could be that we 'make it right'. For any artist whose tool is their body, our physical response to place is the primary medium through which we understand its essence and how appropriate it might be for the artist, their work, and the audience who will be immersed in it. It may not be logical, but perhaps 'sensing' a place is not amiss in a world riddled with logic.”
Is it even possible to distil the essence of a place?
Freelance Cultural Consultant
“Distilling the essence of a place, as an act, is most probably impossible. It’s best to start there! When attempting to define something as boundaryless, mutable and fluid as the concept of a ‘place’, the cards are stacked against you. And any attempt will often reveal more about the person or people doing the distilling - who they’ve listened to, what they’ve prioritised, where they’ve been, what they ‘know’. The best we can collectively aim for is a version of a place, or a reflection of a place at particular “envelope of space-time” (to call on Doreen Massey’s tidy formulation). A momentary, fragmented version of a place that has been perceived by the distiller, at the time at which they experienced it.
However, the drive to find a solution, to identify a place’s essence, isn’t going anywhere. If that’s the case, what can we do to get as close as possible to something truly reflective and honest? I think the most appropriate methodology rests on a combination of:
Deep listening to a place’s many communities
Active learning about a place’s history - its successes and its struggles
Curious examination of what makes a place tick - from architecture through to culture
Reflexively examining what is ‘known’ about that place more broadly and how that knowledge has percolated
Learning about a place - in any form - is a collaborative act. It requires commitment by the distiller to challenge themselves, explore the terrain and uncover what’s missing. The eventual outcome might not be a place’s definitive ‘essence’, but it should be something that has value and importance: hard-won knowledge that reflects the place where it was formed.”
Understanding places matters
This stuff matters because places hold deep significance for people, yet they are often misrepresented. If you work in or with places, you’ve likely seen supposedly place-based policies, strategies, brands or artistic projects that miss the mark. At best, these fail to connect. At worst, they can provoke frustration, resentment or harm.
From the insights of my expert friends, one thing is clear: capturing the essence of a place takes time, depth and the active involvement of its people. It’s easy to spot when something is imposed rather than emerges from within.
Getting to the heart of a place isn’t always straightforward, but if your work is tied to places in any way, investing the effort to understand them properly is essential.