Tender Maps - Travels in Search of the Emotions of Place

Tender Maps is an attempt to define the indefinable, and an exploration of why it is so crucial that we try. From the bluebell woods of Somerset to the freeways of LA, from Istanbul to Nashville, Tbilisi to Venice, Alice Maddicott has journeyed restlessly in search of the thing that meant the most to her: the feeling of a place. But this is more than a travelogue - it''s also a journey of ideas about our experience of place, which encompasses early mapmaking , radical land art, Celtic Christianity, Situationism, children''s literature, and much more. Throughout this exploration is threaded the concept of tender mapping starting with 17th century maps of tenderness and later introducing the embroidered maps made by young girls in the 18th century, Tender Maps navigates the different ways that women and girls locate their emotional experiences of moving through their world. Tender Maps also has a strand of personal memoir; a search for a home. After being made homeless during the pandemic Maddicott returns to her beloved West Country (whose spirit she brilliantly defines in a chapter called West Country Gothic), circling back to her childhood where her enchantment with place began. The book culminates in a manifesto on the power of being in place; of recognising the sentience of places, and entering into a dialogue with our cities. A collaboration with the land. Of seeing atmosphere the emotion of place as something political and vital, not a passive, negligible background to our activities. How we can all make tender maps, and in so doing we open up the world.