Rebecca Solnit - Genius Loci

"All maps are blank in a sense, for while my story is mine, my map of San Francisco is also potentially yours; both can be charted on the same map, and where the past has been mapped the future may yet inscribe other adventures."

Ronald Blythe - Genius Loci

"The hugger-muggerness of life in a farmhouse before there could be such an outlandish thing as a room of one’s own required one to see without looking and to hear without listening."

Detail of black and white photograph of flowers covered in frost by Carrie Finton linking to Memory Maps on the Victoria and Albert Museum website.

Memory Maps at the Victoria and Albert Museum

Memory Maps began as a collaborative project between the Centre for Creative Writing and the Victoria and Albert Museum. All articles and related content remain available on their website.

Memory Maps
-people, objects and places

Memory Maps is about people and their relationship with place. It is about objects that are associated with particular areas as well as prints and paintings of named locations. But most importantly it is about writing about place.

In recent years a new form of writing has emerged drawing on fiction, history, conversation and memoir. Memory Maps includes contributions in the genre from contemporary writers and includes opportunities for contributing new works.

The project began as a collaboration between the Centre for Creative Writing in the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies (LiFTS) at the University of Essex and the Victoria and Albert Museum. A new website was created in 2012 to continue the project's work.