Storytelling via spaces

Wow, what a great question, and I won't answer it as you asked.

Rather, I'll speak to literacy's role in helping people appreciate and discover stories intrinsic to spaces.

It happens a few ways--literacy--peoples ability to interpret a story intrinsic to the space, and with more human context, historically too.

Forests/floodplains in Michigan Rivers and the intersection between plants/water and people

Three helped me realize that:

I worked as an environmental interpreter, did a lot of field biology/watershed analysis, and also did a field project on cemeteries in my hometown. All those projects and courses helped me learn to "read" stories in human communities (e.g. gravestones over time and a cemetery communicates a lot about a place), living natural communities (seeing conflict between plant communities on a forest floor), and non-living natural stuff: reading a river's history via cues from the land itself and what it says about land upstream/downstream.

Doing so allowed me to "read" hints that tell us what a river once looked like and where it flowed when it was "young", what's happening upstream just by looking at the bank and angle leaning trees, how wide a river bank might have once been before suburban development happened upstream , and how quickly (and clear) a stream might be flowing. That's being able to "read" a story in the land. Similar with knowing native plants vs. non-native species--some will disrupt the distribution of native fauna as they compete for space (even to an extent that some species engage in chemical warfare and change soil composition).

Wow, what a great question, and I won't answer quite as you asked!

Rather, consider literacy's role in helping people appreciate and discover stories intrinsic to how they relate to spaces (or other things).

I'll point to philosopher Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic and the role of relationships: the idea that we can look at fellow humans, other animals, plants, water, and the soil as neighbors in the same community--human, biotic (living things), and abiotic (rocks and stuff).

Some plants will grow only in salty environments. People salt footpaths and roads in Michigan--so we see very different kinds of plants near sidewalk borders and roadsides. From there, you can tell a story via sustainability about the social, legal, economic, and environmental impacts of salt.

e.g. telling a story about rock salt and its role in boosting an invasive plant's population (slides intended for science class so some content-specific language, but intended to be mostly accessible for public understanding)

https://www.academia.edu/6992633/The_Phragmites_australis_Invasion_and_the_use_of_Rock_Salt_as_a_Road_De-Icer