MAPPING MEANING 2025

Theme: The Sun My Heart / The Sun Our Future

Location: The Neltje Center, Wyoming

June 22-28

Organized by Krista Caballero, Melanie Armstrong, and Jennifer Richter

Community Event: June 25-26

REGISTER HERE FOR ONE OR BOTH DAYS.

For more information, email mappingmeaning@mappingmeaning.org 

“Let the sunlight of awareness shine on our self and enlighten it, so we can look at it directly.” 

The Sun My Heart (1988) by Thich Nhat Hanh 

Mapping Meaning 2025, “The Sun My Heart/The Sun Our Future,” focuses on the power and poetry of the Sun, the star at the center of our Solar System holding us all together. We take up this theme to cultivate awareness, concentration and understanding; harnessing the real and imagined energy the Sun offers to inspire more just, creative and exciting ecological futures. Experiential and experimental approaches will ground our time as we explore ways mental ecology is directly connected to the social and environmental ecologies we co-create. 

Based at the Neltje Center and immersed in the complex landscapes of northeastern Wyoming, this community workshop invites collective and creative dialogue about our past, present, and future. 

COMMUNITY EVENT SCHEDULE

JUNE 25 - GILLETTE

11:30 am Eagle Butte Mine Tour

2:00 pm  Gillette Area Tour and guest presentations 

7:00 pm  Dinner and Panel Discussion at Neltje Center

Join Mapping Meaning for a moderated discussion with Jennifer Richter and local environmental experts, moderated by Melanie Armstrong, on environmental and energy futures focused on Wyoming’s role in energy transitions.  What will Wyoming’s landscape look like fifty years in the future? What will the future circumstances of the world look like, and how will we interact with those forces? What are the guiding values that we have today, and how can they evolve in the future to envision and re-imagine different ways of energizing our collective futures?

JUNE 26 – NELTJE CENTER

Breakfast and lunch provided. A short reception follows at 5:30 pm.

8:30 am  Breakfast and mingling   

9:30 am   The Sun Our Future: Energy futures charrette

Engage in an innovative design charrette imagining Wyoming’s energy future. Through collective mapping we will explore local, regional, and global landscapes, and then design speculative monuments to commemorate our energy past and imagine our energy futures.

1:30 pm The Sun My Heart: Material legacies of the future

Participants will learn basic bookmaking techniques, incorporating ideas, images, stories and dreams that emerge from the energy futures charrette. Alternative photo processes (such as cyanotypes) will also be integrated into the book making process, providing space for collaborating with the sun in the image-making process.