We all have places that are special to us - the place of that first kiss, the churchyard at that funeral, or where you learnt to ride a bike. Without knowing it, many of us share intense feelings about the same place. One of these places – if we can call it that – is that huge snaking slow-moving band of water called the River Thames.
The River Thames flows close to our hospice in South East London and almost everyone here has a personal tale to tell about it. So we decided to turn it into a project. We printed out much enlarged pages of the London A-Z of our area and pinned them to the day centre wall. Hospice users were then invited to write any memories they had about the river on Post-It notes and stick them, with images, to the appropriate part of the map. After several months our great River Map emerged – a place of special memory but also a metaphor for the ebb and flow of life.