The act of remembering and retelling experiences plays are far greater role than we often realise. Safeguarding cultural memories strengthens local identity, fosters resilience, and connects generations.
The Mapping Memories project seeks to document, sustain, and share cultural heritage in Greenland, zooming in on Ilulissat, through participatory storytelling and digital mapping. By engaging youth in recording memories and stories from older residents, the project helps the knowledge transfer between generations, while raising awareness of the impacts of climate change on cultural heritage.
From memories to a living map
Mapping Memories brought together researchers, cultural institutions, local communities and storytellers to document and share cultural heritage through spatial storytelling.
In Ilulissat, local residents were interviewed about places that held particular memories or cultural significance. Their stories were connected to locations on an interactive digital map, bringing together landscape, lived experience and observations of environmental change.
Rather than treating memory simply as something belonging to the past, the project demonstrates how personal stories can contribute to our understanding of landscapes undergoing rapid transformation. Scientific measurements can tell us where permafrost is thawing or where the physical environment is changing. Mapping Memories adds another layer: what those changes mean to the people who know and use these places.
What the project achieved
Mapping Memories transformed interviews and local knowledge into resources that can continue to be explored, shared and used beyond the project itself.
The project:
- collected and mapped personal stories connected to culturally and personally significant places;
- created an interactive digital map where visitors can explore memories in their geographical context;
- developed an exhibition at the Ilulissat Icefjord Centre combining maps, personal narratives and visual material;
- brought different generations together to discuss how climate change affects places, memories and cultural identity;
- developed educational activities and materials that allow schools and other groups to work with the project independently.
The exhibition was launched at the Ilulissat Icefjord Centre on 16 September 2026, bringing together more than 80 participants. Local students and residents made up most of the audience, alongside researchers and project partners.
Young participants did not only visit the exhibition. They explored stories from older generations, discussed places that matter in their own lives and created their own “memory cards” identifying places they would like future generations and decision-makers to remember.
In doing so, the launch demonstrated one of the central ideas behind Mapping Memories: connecting personal stories with a changing landscape can make an issue as large and abstract as climate change tangible, local and relevant to everyday life.
Explore the Mapping Memories map
The Mapping Memories digital map allows you to explore places through the memories and experiences connected to them.
Each mapped location provides an entry point into someone’s story. Together, the stories form an alternative map of Ilulissat: one shaped not only by roads, buildings and physical geography, but also by experience, memory and belonging.
Short tutorial video on how to navigate the digital map:
For teachers and educators
Mapping Memories can be used as a classroom resource for exploring climate change, geography, cultural heritage, local knowledge and the relationship between people and place.
The materials were developed particularly with young people in mind. During the Ilulissat exhibition launch, students worked directly with the project through a combination of listening, exploring, sharing and observing.
Teachers can recreate this approach using the digital exhibition, recorded talks and downloadable exercises available on this page.
The activities are particularly suitable for students around 8th–10th grade, but they can easily be adapted for younger or older groups.
Five ideas to introduce to your class
Before exploring the map, introduce the project through five simple ideas:
- Climate change happens in particular places. Global environmental change can become easier to understand when we look at what is happening to places people know and use every day.
- Environmental change affects more than the physical landscape. Permafrost thaw can damage buildings and infrastructure, but changes to the landscape can also affect traditions, activities, memories and a sense of belonging.
- A map can contain stories as well as geography. Mapping Memories connects people’s memories and experiences directly to the places where they happened.
- Local knowledge and scientific knowledge can complement one another. Satellite images and measurements show us physical change, while people’s experiences can tell us what those changes mean in everyday life.
- Remembering a place can help us think about its future. Asking why particular places matter raises questions about what we want to preserve and what future planners and decision-makers should understand.
Suggested lesson structure
Total lesson time: 1 hour – 1 hour 40 minutes
1. Introduce Mapping Memories
Approx. 10 minutes
Use the five points above to introduce the central idea of the project. Ask students:
Can you think of a place that would matter to you even if it did not look important on an official map?
This could be a path, playground, harbour, beach, football pitch, viewpoint, fishing place or somewhere connected to family and friends.
2. Explore the digital map
Approx. 10–15 minutes
Give pupils time to explore the Mapping Memories map themselves.
Encourage them to click between different locations rather than reading the stories in a particular order.
Ask them to consider:
- What kinds of places appear on the map?
- Why might these places matter to the people telling the stories?
- What kinds of environmental or social change do they describe?
- Are there places on the map that would normally be overlooked on a conventional map?
Optional or alternative map navigation challenge:
Ask pupils, individually or in pairs, to find specific stories on the map:
- PLACE 1 Example: Nunianneq
- PLACE 2 Example: Qimussimik aalisariarneq
For each story, they should identify: Whose memory or story is connected to this place?
Once everyone has found the two stories, compare the answers as a class. You can make the task more challenging by asking pupils to find the places using the pictures connected to the story instead of the place name and then explain how they navigated there.
3. Group exercise: What makes a place matter?
Approx. 20–30 minutes
Divide pupils into groups of four to six.
Each group chooses one place that matters to them, their family, their school or their community.
It does not need to be famous or officially important. It could be a path, harbour, hill, beach, playground, viewpoint, sports ground, meeting place or somewhere connected to family life.
Using the downloadable exercise sheet, ask the groups to discuss:
- What place did you choose?
- Why does it matter?
- What memories, activities or stories are connected to it?
- Has the place changed, or could it change in the future?
- What would be lost if people could no longer use or recognise it?
- What should adults, planners or decision-makers understand about this place?
4. Create a memory card
Approx. 10–15 minutes
Each group turns its discussion into a simple Memory Card.
The card asks pupils to record:
- The name or description of their place;
- One short memory or story connected to it;
- One change they have observed or imagine could happen;
- One message they would like future visitors or decision-makers to know.
The cards can be shared with the class, displayed on a wall or placed together on a local map to create your own small version of Mapping Memories.
6. Reflect together
Approx. 15-20 minutes
Finish by asking each group to share one observation.
Possible discussion questions include:
- Were there similarities between the places people chose?
- What kinds of changes did you discuss?
- Who decides which places are important enough to protect?
- Would your class’s map look different from an official map of your town or community? Why?
- What should people remember about these places 20 years from now?
Download the educational materials
Classroom exercise sheet
A printable worksheet guiding pupils through the “What makes a place matter?” group discussion. It includes questions about memory, use, environmental change and what could be lost when a familiar place changes.
Memory Card
A simple printable template for pupils to document a place that matters to them. Each card combines a place, a memory, a possible change and a message for the future.
Use the cards individually or combine them with a map of your local area to create your own classroom memory map.
Mapping Memories booklets
Download the Mapping Memories booklets for a deeper introduction to the project, its stories and the wider context of environmental change in Ilulissat. The booklets bring together project background, personal perspectives and selected mapped stories, and can be used either as preparation for a lesson or as supplementary reading for students.
They are designed to complement the digital map and video recordings, giving readers more time to explore the links between landscape, memory, cultural heritage and climate change.
Keep exploring
Mapping Memories shows that landscapes are more than physical spaces. They contain experiences, knowledge, relationships and memories accumulated across generations.
By preserving stories about changing places, we can better understand not only what is changing, but what is at stake and what people want to carry into the future.
Explore the digital map, watch the project recordings and download the materials to bring Mapping Memories into your own classroom or community. If you are in Ilulissat, you can also visit the physical Mapping Memories exhibition at the Ilulissat Icefjord Centre, where it will remain open until spring 2027.
Project partners
Mapping Memories was developed through collaboration between research, cultural and local partners working across the Nordic and Arctic regions. The project brought together Nordregio, the Ilulissat Icefjord Centre and Places.nu, with contributions from the Stefansson Arctic Institute at the University of Akureyri and Vestlandsforskning. The project was funded by NAPA – the Nordic Institute in Greenland.
Together, the partners combined research, local knowledge, storytelling, exhibition development and digital mapping to document how environmental change is experienced through places, memories and cultural heritage.
