A shared language for shaping better places.

Place Literacy is the ability to understand, engage with, and shape the places where we live, grow, work, and play.

Too often, we lack the words to talk about place together. What do we mean when we say a place feels welcoming, unequal, alive, or neglected? Without a shared language, conversations fragment, histories are overlooked, ecologies ignored, and power imbalances left unchallenged.

Place Literacy provides an answer. It builds the awareness, shared language, and tools to see how visible, hidden, and invisible forces shape place, and develops the agency to act for more abundant, sustainable, and resilient futures.

IF/’s Place Literacy tools and frameworks help communities, practitioners, and learners create a shared language of place. They draw on two core resources: the Elements of Place, which offer entry points for noticing and questioning the forces that shape place, and the Shared Practices, six habits that guide awareness into action.

Every place, no matter how familiar or complex, can be explored through six Elements of Place. They help us notice connections between what is visible, partly hidden, and often invisible.

  • The viewpoints, positionalities, and cultural lenses through which place is seen and experienced. It reminds us that no place is understood from a single angle.

  • All the living systems that animate place. From health and wellbeing to ecological interdependence, life makes place dynamic and responsive.

  • The physical matter: organic, geologic, synthetic, waste, water, and air. Materials carry histories of extraction, use, and reuse, shaping how places feel and function.

  • The shapes, structures, and topographies of place, from landscapes and hydrological patterns to streets, buildings, and styles. Form gives physical presence to place.

  • The practices, routines, and rhythms that unfold in place. Activity highlights how people and communities use, adapt, and redefine spaces through everyday life.

  • The connections, roles, and interdependencies that bind people, species, and systems. Relationships define place through power, exchange, and care.

Through six Shared Practices, Place Literacy helps move from awareness to understanding to action.

These practices are not a fixed sequence but part of a circular, iterative process. Each one feeds into the next, but also loops back on itself: observation leads to new interpretations, critique reshapes how we describe, and engagement opens fresh possibilities for transformation.

IF/ supports the development of Place Literacy in two ways: through the Place Literacy Lab and the Place Literacy Campaign.

The Lab is the experimental engine, where new methods are researched, tested, and refined. The Campaign takes these ideas into the world, sharing tools and practices openly and supporting the growth of Place Literacy worldwide. Together, they embed Place Literacy across schools, communities, cultural programmes, and policy, creating the conditions for better places, stronger connections, and more equitable futures.