Seeing Community: Mapping, Sensemaking and the Practice of Learning Together

Photo by Malcolm Lightbody on Unsplash

Article 1 in our series asked “What is community?”.  Originally, Article 2 was going to ask “How do we map interconnections in the community capital field?” We wanted to discuss the drawing up of a journey map practitioners can see themselves in. We also wanted to  explore how we can better connect, learn from, adapt, translate up and across the fields, and in what ways we might experiment our way forward together.

Upon reflection and after being at the Catalyst Community Finance Summit in Winnipeg, our deeper question is: Beyond these interconnections we map, how do we learn to see community?

We also received feedback from some readers of our first article for which we are very grateful. Thanks for reading it!

The feedback suggests a subtle but important evolution in the series. If Article 1 was about community finance, Article 2 begins to ask whether finance is only one expression of something deeper: the relationships, governance, trust, ecological connections, and learning capacities that enable communities to flourish. That opens a richer intellectual journey—one that includes money but doesn’t centre it. 

As we continue our journey, we have also been fed by ongoing conversations with Tamarack Institute and the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC) who have been asking similar questions. Their research, to be published later this month, explores how communities are navigating financing, incubation, investment readiness, and implementation in community-led initiatives across Canada. Their research has included communities engaged in Tamarack’s network, including Alberni Clayoquot Region BC, Richmond BC, Edmonton AB, Saskatoon SK, and Southern Georgian Bay ON.

A map is an output. Seeing is a practice. Learning is a capability. Community becomes something we cultivate the capacity to recognize in all its varying arrangements and relationships. This article is now much less about mapping technologies and much more about sensemaking, stewardship and community learning. 

In this article you will also see that we have introduced some personas. The personas aren’t there simply to attract different readers—they become different ways of seeing the same community.  As helpful as personas can be, so too are case studies, see the case study on social finance (Case 3) in the part 2 essay by one of the co-authors of this piece. 

Likewise, the mapping methods are not a catalogue of techniques but different epistemologies: different answers to the question, “What counts as knowledge here?” [Quick reference: epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with questions concerning the nature, scope, and sources of knowledge. “What is epistemology?” Keith DeRose, Yale University, 2005]

“In Seeing Community: Every Map Reveals a Different & Important part of a shared Story”

In adjacent discussions on missions as an approach to addressing systemic challenges, there has been an emphasis on orchestration as a role for intermediaries. During this mapping exploration, we are wondering whether a more meaningful and needed role is one of illumination and amplification of what is resonant in place.

“not everything should be held and directed” – Geraldine Cahill, in discussing our mental shift from orchestration to flow.

Helping communities see themselves. Helping patterns become visible. Helping learning become more known across places so wisdom can be exchanged and in that way promising practice can be shared with others in our own field and across fields and sectors.

Helping ourselves and others ask better questions. Helping relationships deepen in place and across scales. And seeing how communities orchestrate themselves.

Intermediaries can illuminate the conditions that make that possible. – Louise Adongo

Article One situated community finance within a broader field of community economic development and community wealth building. It asked where community finance fits, and whether community capital might offer a broader way of thinking about the resources communities steward together. 

In this Article, we have shifted from: How do we map community? to: How do we learn to see community? and consequently, we recognize some different considerations are required. And this is not an issue; this is the magic of being in community and attuning to relationships and what is being asked versus what we would prefer to do. This is also why we want to move beyond orchestration to flow. The flow is emergent….

What happens when we learn to see our community holistically, not simply its beneficiaries, its organizations, its funding, its assets. But/and/also the living  (multidirectional) relationships that make communities possible.

Every map tells a story. Every map also leaves something out. Community is not something we merely build. Community is something we learn to perceive.

Each map in the persona-based images below answers a different question about what matters. 

Images created by Louise Adongo

In mapping we are also asking about what we are choosing to make visible? With this distinction, Money. Governance. Trust. Land. Culture. Institutions. Ecology. become different expressions of community rather than definitions of it. AND this makes the maps we create epistemological rather than technical. 

This means we move from “here are mapping tools* to: here are different ways of knowing.

*Note: we definitely still include mapping tools for different kinds of maps for different purposes as a resource because we are research and policy nerds so we roll like that 🙂 

Most community mapping illustrations depict objects: assets, infrastructure, services, networks. This second essay in our series is about something subtler. It asks readers to notice that every map is already an answer to the question “What counts?”

By drawing the same community three times through the eyes of three different personas, we make visible that mapping is not merely descriptive but interpretive. Each image becomes a visual expression of an epistemology: 

• the practitioner foregrounds relationships and belonging, 
• the investor perceives long-term conditions and regenerative capacity, and 
• the institutional partner attends to coordination across overlapping systems. 

Together they reveal that no single map is complete because no single standpoint encompasses the whole community.

This also creates a natural bridge from Article 1. Community finance becomes one legitimate map among many—not diminished, but situated within a broader ecology of relationships, governance, culture, learning, and place. 

The invitation to readers is no longer simply to learn a new framework, but to ask: “Who am I as an observer? What does my position allow me to see, and what does it obscure?” That question embodies the Article 2 title Seeing Community: Mapping, Sensemaking and the Practice of Learning Together and prepares the ground for the later overlays of time, scale, and more-than-human perspectives.

A benefit of seeing the three maps alongside and in relation to each other is being able to surface opportunity and invitations across the persona groups, as well as identify where relationships or misunderstandings may be preventing engagement. 

In summary, this image shares some of the ways we are thinking about how mapping by members of the Catalyst Community can support our journey in discovering how we build our shared understanding of Community Capital (what it is, how it is showing up in our communities and what changes we are seeing, or wish to see with it).  

As we gathered at our June Catalyst meetup immediately following the Community Finance Summit, community members expressed gratitude for the Summit’s focus on grounding the conversations in community but also reiterated that there is an ongoing and persistent gap between community and finance that needs to be filled. This gap frustration keeps goading us to answer what is needed to fill it? What is required to bridge the divide/s? Part of the answer may lie in the persona maps which help to illuminate the multiple ways of seeing a situation within a community and to support sensemaking. 

We referenced the work of Tamarack and SRDC in the introduction as they are sharing their journey with us and are motivated by similar questions. During the Summit, these partners planned to co-produce a journey map by inviting people to self-identify where they would place themselves in the community finance field. 

However, they discovered that the journey map was the wrong tool for the job. There was something else driving communities to engage in community capital work. Like most things, the journey is not linear. As articulated in the graphic below, our work in and with communities begins with purpose and relationship. Catalyst co-manager Jo Reynolds would say, “Community financing should not be the horse pulling the cart. A finance-first design often leads to a poor fit for purpose.” You start with understanding where you are and what is motivating your collective desire to change things.

Then you choose the map that fits the question.

From the map/s you may then better illuminate possibilities and begin a series of experiments – testing what could contribute to the change your community wishes to see. Where and when finance becomes a useful tool, you can engage with it then, better understanding its purpose and application. This all sounds much more straightforward than it is in reality; but starting small may help avoid some pitfalls. At least it can strengthen your collective capacity to learn, adapt and keep moving forward. 

Closing and an Invitation

This article isn’t intended as an invitation to create maps together (not for/on behalf of each other). Every map highlights some features while leaving others in the background. This learning map is no different. It is not intended to be comprehensive, but invitational. Follow the paths that resonate with your questions. Community stewardship is less about finding the one correct map than about learning which map is most helpful for the journey you’re on.

In our Mighty Network Sandbox we want to continue to explore (with you): • maps • mapping methods • mapping personas • trust as infrastructure • community capital • learning across scales • tiny experiments

Join us there! 

Note: You will have to create an account in the Catalyst Community Finance Mighty Network first.

Bring a map. Bring a voice note. Bring a question. Bring something unfinished.

Communities are never finished. Neither are their maps. There is always something else. 

Learning Map

This article has drawn on ideas from community finance, community economic development, systems thinking, ecology, networks, and community practice. Rather than ending with a conventional bibliography, we offer this learning map. Think of it as a set of trailheads into different landscapes of practice. Maps rarely tell us where to go; that is up to us – we decide where and when we are going. Maps do help us notice where we are, what surrounds us, and which direction we might choose next.

1. Community Finance and Community Wealth
2. Just Transitions and Regenerative Futures
3. Making Sense of Complexity
4. Networks and Emergence
5. Belonging and Community 
6. Community Beyond People
7. Canadian Practice
8. How we actually map community

1. If you’re exploring community finance and community wealth

These works explain how communities organize capital, build local ownership, and strengthen economic resilience.These works ask not simply how wealth grows, but who owns it, who benefits, and how communities can retain and regenerate it.

• Democracy Collaborative. Community Wealth Building with Action Guide
• U.S. Department of the Treasury. Community Development Financial Institutions Fund: About CDFIs.
• Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. What is Community Development?
• Canadian Community Economic Development Network. About Community Economic Development.
• Community Development Finance Association. What is Community Development Finance?
• Centre for Local Economic Strategies. Community Wealth Building: Theory and Practice.
• Gibson-Graham, J.K., Cameron, J., & Healy, S. Take Back the Economy.
• Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Building Community Wealth: Policy Tools for Local Economic Development.
• Michael Shuman. Going Local.
• Erik Olin Wright. Envisioning Real Utopias.
• Sascha Haselmayer The Slow Lane

2. If you’re interested in just transitions and regenerative futures

These works connect community wealth with climate justice, democratic economies, and long-term resilience.

• Just Transition Alliance. Principles of a Just Transition.
• Tim Jackson. Post Growth.
• Chris Benner & Manuel Pastor. Inclusive Economy: Creating Opportunity and Sharing Prosperity.
• OECD. Inclusive Growth.
• RAD Network. Tools and Info Sheets

3. If you’re trying to make sense of complexity

Communities behave less like machines than living systems. These books offer ways of thinking about emergence, adaptation, and change.

• Donella Meadows. Thinking in Systems.
• Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman, & Michael Quinn Patton. Getting to Maybe.
• Peter Senge. The Fifth Discipline.
• Brenda Zimmerman, Curt Lindberg & Paul Plsek. Edgeware

4. If you’re curious about networks and emergence

Communities are woven through relationships. These works explore how trust, ideas, influence, and collective action spread.

• Albert-László Barabási. Linked.
• Manuel Castells. Networks of Outrage and Hope.
• adrienne maree brown. Emergent Strategy.

5. If you’re exploring belonging and community

These works begin not with deficits but with the gifts, capacities, and relationships already present in a place.

• John McKnight & Peter Block. The Abundant Community.
• John Kretzmann & John McKnight. Building Communities from the Inside Out.
• Peter Block. Community: The Structure of Belonging.
• Al Etmanski. Courage to Care: Ripples of Love in Action (any all his other books)
• Priya Parker. The Art of Gathering

6. If you’re exploring community beyond people

Communities also include rivers, forests, soils, pollinators, shared resources, memory, and future generations.

These works invite a more relational and ecological worldview.

• Robin Wall Kimmerer. Braiding Sweetgrass.
• Robin Wall Kimmerer. The Serviceberry.
• David Bollier & Silke Helfrich (eds.). The Wealth of Commons.
• Karl Polanyi. The Great Transformation.

7. If you’re looking for Canadian practice

Many Canadian organizations are already experimenting with these ideas in communities across the country.These organizations demonstrate that mapping, learning, community finance, and systems change are not abstract ideas—they are living practices.

• Tamarack Institute
• Canadian Community Economic Development Network (CCEDNet)
• Shorefast Institute
• McConnell Foundation
• Canadian Urban Institute
• Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISE)
• And the many participating organizations at the Catalyst Summit

8. If you’re wondering how we actually map community

Different questions require different maps. Each reveals different aspects of community. None tells the whole story. Explore approaches such as:

• Participatory GIS
• Asset Mapping (What strengths already exist?)
• Network Mapping (who knows whom?) *also useful for Power Mapping
• Systems Mapping (where are leverage points? network analysis-who is acting in what role)
• Story Mapping (what stories matter?)
• Cultural Mapping (how does place shape us?)
• Journey Mapping (how are people actually experiencing change?)
• Ripple Effect Mapping (What unexpected change occurred?)
• Outcome Harvesting (How are communities adapting?)
• Developmental Evaluation (What are we learning together? Over time)

About the authors

Louise Adongo is the Principal Owner of Caprivian Strip Inc.

Geraldine Cahill is the Co-manager, Catalyst Community Finance and Director, UpSocial Canada