‘Sense of Place’ 2022 by Students at Academy of Science and Entrepreneurship

For this year’s “Sense of Place” project, students in Rachel Bahr’s English 11 class at the Academy of Science and Entrepreneurship created 18 videos that reveal how our community has “countless places that people can identify with, each holding a different story,” writes student Lilly Laudeman. The videos also “capture our sense of place,” she says, and they record “why these places mattered so much to us.” Above, a screenshot from Violet Melvin’s video.

Introduction by student Lilly Laudeman

What creates a sense of place? How can we both define and share it with others?

These are the questions we explored, challenged by our English 11 teacher, Rachel Bahr (a teacher at The Academy of Science and Entrepreneurship) and Limestone Post. In a collaborative project titled “Sense of Place,” we were asked to define just that: our sense of place.

Photo of the IU campus featured in Auggie O’Brien-Zink’s “sense of place” video.

We discovered how Bloomington’s buildings and people provide a feeling of home. The community has created countless places that people can identify with, each holding a different story. For you, your sense of place could be anywhere you feel connected to and safe. Whether it be the park that contains your childhood memories or the woods you enjoy walking through, everyone has one.

Driving us further into the project, our key question was “How can you, as a resident of Bloomington, share your ‘sense of place’ in an immersive audio tour?” Exploring the past helps us define our present, making way for our project introduction: Breaking Away. Produced in 1979, it is an Oscar-award winning film, filmed entirely in Bloomington. Like us, you may find yourself recognizing many of the locations shown in the movie. Yet, countless things have also changed over the last 43 years, which raises the question: how can we keep our sense of place in this changing world?

Reading Sarah Gordon’s article “Are Market Forces Ruining B-town’s ‘Sense of Place’?” in Limestone Post, we looked into the community influence these changes have brought and their importance. This included the past English 11 students and discovering what it meant to them, too. Learning about past classes’ sense of place helped us discover our own, connecting us between the years. After learning about the history and importance behind the places we chose, we created immersive visual and audio tours. Taking photos and videos to capture our sense of place, we recorded why these places mattered so much to us. From the students who talked about the local teen space downtown to our local college campuses, we’ve created these videos that invite you into our special places.

Watch and learn what makes our city ‘our city’ to us, the English 11 students of 2022-2023!