You already know things about the place where you live.
You don’t need to be an artist, scientist, or expert to contribute to Field Notes for the Future.
If you garden, farm, walk the same road every day, watch birds from your kitchen window, fish, photograph wildflowers, notice when the creek rises, remember winters from twenty years ago, or simply spend time outdoors – you notice things.
That knowledge matters.
Field Notes for the Future is creating a community archive of those observations across rural Ottawa, Renfrew County, and the wider Ottawa Valley.
A Field Note can be an observation, memory, sketch, photograph, map, sound, story, question—or something you noticed today that you don’t want to forget.
What are you noticing?
Maybe the frogs started calling earlier this year.
A bird you used to see hasn’t returned.
Your garden is behaving differently.
A creek floods in places it didn’t before.
There are fewer insects around the porch light.
A plant has appeared along the roadside.
The first frost comes later.
Or maybe you’ve simply noticed something beautiful.
You don’t have to know what it means. Noticing is enough.
Ways to take part
You can:
- contribute a Field Note
- join a field walk or community workshop
- take part in biodiversity observation
- participate in meadow and habitat stewardship
- share memories and knowledge of a local place
- make photographs, drawings, maps, recordings, or stories
- bring your family
- volunteer at a Field Lab activity
- help us notice how a place changes over time
A growing community archive
No single person can observe an entire landscape.
But when many people pay attention over time, individual observations begin to form a richer record of a place – its seasons, species, changes, memories, and the relationships people have built with it.
Artists and researchers bring particular ways of observing. So do farmers, gardeners, children, elders, naturalists, neighbours, and people who have known a place for decades.
Field Notes for the Future creates a place for those different observations to live alongside one another.
Come pay attention with us.
The project is growing through field activities, workshops, community events, museums, and partner sites across the Ottawa Valley.
Contribute something you’ve noticed today – or join us for a future activity.
