What is the Oracle of Place

The name might be unfamiliar, so let me explain what this project called 'Oracle of Place', actually is, what it is trying to do, and why it matters, both as a piece of research and as something that belongs to Kington.

Starting with the Cards

At the centre of this project will be a set of oracle cards.

Each card will feature a real place, route, landscape, or landmark from in and around Kington, and each of these will be rooted in the stories and memories of people who know those places personally.

Oracle cards have a long history as a tool for reflection and meaning-making. In this project, they're not used for divination or prediction. Instead, they function as a creative format, a material way of holding and sharing community knowledge, and of inviting people to engage with familiar places in new and attentive ways.

The randomness of drawing a card, the interpretive openness of what it might mean on any given day, and the ritual of returning to the deck repeatedly, these are the properties this research is interested in.

The question I'm asking is whether the format of the oracle cards can do something specific: can oracle cards made from community stories help people develop a deeper, more sustained connection to the local landscape over time?

Why This is a Research Project

The Oracle of Place is a PhD research study based at the University of Worcester.

It sits at the intersection of oral history, creative practice, and place-based research, and it draws on an established body of academic work exploring how people relate to the places they live, and what role creative formats play in sustaining that relationship.

While there is good evidence that creative practices can deepen people's sense of connection to place, less is understood about which specific properties of creative formats enable that connection, and whether any connection developed continues beyond active project participation.

That is the gap this research is trying to address.

Kington is not simply a convenient fieldwork location because I live nearby. It's a community with a distinctive relationship to its landscape and its own history of local knowledge and storytelling.

This research grows from my curiosity about this specific place, and from a commitment to research that is rooted in, and accountable to, the communities it works with.

What Makes This Approach Different

Many place-based or community arts projects are created by practitioners and delivered to communities.

The Oracle of Place works differently. The cards themselves will be shaped by the stories, memories, and experiences that residents contribute; the project cannot exist without that knowledge, and it would be a fundamentally different project if it tried.

This is more than a participatory ethos, though it is that too. But it reflects a methodological position: that the people who know a place, who have walked its paths, worked in its buildings, watched its landscape change across decades, hold forms of knowledge that academic research should take seriously and find ways to honour.

At the same time, this is rigorous academic research. Contributions are collected through an ethical process, handled with care, and used to address a genuine research question.

The two things, both community rootedness and academic rigour, are not in tension here. They are both essential.

How the Project Unfolds

The research takes place in two stages.

Stage 1, which this website currently supports, involves collecting stories and memories from Kington residents through oral history interviews and written story submissions. These stories form the foundation of what will become the oracle cards.

Stage 2, which will follow, involves creating the cards from those stories and exploring how they're used, whether, and in what ways, the oracle card format sustains people's connection to the places featured.

Details of Stage 2 will be shared on this site in due course.

An Invitation

If you have a connection to Kington, if you know its streets, its paths, its landscape, its history, this research is interested in what you know.

You don't need to think of yourself as a storyteller, a historian, or a creative person. You simply need to have a relationship with this place, which, if you are reading this, you almost certainly do.

Full details of how to get involved, what taking part means in practice, and your rights as a participant are all available on the Get Involved page and in the Participant Information Sheet.

And if you have any questions, please contact me here.