RGS Conference 2024

Let's get hands-on with participatory mapping

Livingmaps Network invites conference attendees to gain some practical experience with creative and interpretative forms of participatory mapping and counter-mapping. We are offering several options for practical mapping workshops based on mapping approaches that Livingmaps members have used in their projects. Attendees choose one workshop.

Participatory mapping describes the participation of communities in creating maps that are concerned with their lived experience or local knowledge, which may then be used in community decision-making processes. Counter-mapping seeks to question dominant maps and modes of mapping. These forms of mapping are often referred to as social cartography, ethnocartography, cultural cartography and radical cartography.

Livingmaps members will take you through their innovative approaches and be on hand to discuss their experiences of mapping with communities, including the opportunities and challenges of knowledge co-production and of impact with participatory mapping. Their mapping approaches have been used in a range of contexts including with new arrivals to the UK; young people; and local communities displaced or at risk of being displaced by redevelopment.

Livingmaps Network was established in 2013 to develop a network of researchers, community activists, artists and others with a common interest in the use of counter-mapping for social change, public engagement, critical debate and creative forms of community campaigning.

No previous mapping experience is required.

Heather Miles_Convenor, Panel Chair

Workshop Option A: Social Systems Mapping for Transformational Change

Barbara Brayshay_RHUL, Livingmaps Network

With Social System Mapping we loosen the boundaries of what we're doing and how we do it. We're looking less for an expert-driven conclusive analysis and more for an iterative, collective, emergent synthesis that leads to next-wise-steps at multiple scales. It's not a precise definition of a single moment. It's a fuzzy approximation of complex dynamics - meant to increase our collective capacity to manage within the actual complexity in the real world. (Greater than the Sum 2021)

Participatory mapping is increasingly used as a research tool for community engagement and consultation often in the form of geographic mapping of community assets and resources or heritage memory mapping. However, to effectively address complex ‘wicked’ societal issues, such as economic inequality, health and wellbeing and the climate crisis there is a need for a methodology that represents the lived experiences and concerns of citizens through mapping and visualising the networks they are embedded in.

Network maps are diagrams that consist of elements and connections. Elements or nodes represent people, organisations, concepts and/or community issues. Connections represent the networks of collaborations and flows between nodes. Importantly they are not static representations, they are also dynamic, interactive, animated, and analysable.

In this experimental workshop we will attempt to build a thematic network map with participants, outlining our research methodology based on Participatory Action Research principles that integrates storytelling and network mapping to empower communities in the processes needed to bring about transformative systems change.

The tool was developed in collaboration with Drew Mackie, Drew Mackie Associates

Workshop Option B: Unmapping Space: An Embodied Drawing Workshop

Kimbal Bumstead_Independant multi-disciplinary artist

Unmapping is an artistic research project which explores the process of drawing as a tool to visualise and contemplate subjective and felt experiences of spaces and places. Drawing, specifically the physical act of making marks on paper, is a truly embodied form of visual communication, since the marks we produce with our bodies come from within us. Our gestures and the marks they leave, are as unique as a signature.

This embodied drawing workshop explores how the visceral and tactile nature of mark-making can be used as a tool to explore and capture the complex relationships between the body and its experiences in, and of, spaces and places. Through a series of drawing activities, we will look at drawing as both an exploratory device to ‘tune-in’ to the sensory experiences of here and now, and as a methodology to make maps of how places and spaces are experienced, remembered and imagined.

The drawings we create during the workshop point towards what an embodied map could look like. They might be abstract or cryptic, perhaps understood only by the person who made them. They might be literal and reveal unexpected personal observations, or they could be re-interpretations of memories. These drawings become a starting point for conversations to discover both individual and shared narratives about spaces and places.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CQ-TxCAvxXlsW_xkNR6Ez1snoaWoByrV/view?usp=drive_link

Workshop Option C: Mapping Sustainability and Biodiversity in our Local Area

Jina Lee_University of Arts London, Livingmaps Network

The workshop, hosted by Livingmaps Network at RGS, will give participants the opportunity to create a personalised map using the TalkingMap method in an informal and relaxed setting. The TalkingMap is an interdisciplinary map-making tool created by artist and researcher Jina Lee to potentially map and capture the hidden voices of people. Beyond the conventional map, it uses critical cartographic methods and contemporary drawing practices to gather information about a particular place, its inhabitants and their narratives through oral history and interviews. This method was originally intended to create a life map, but has been widely used as a participatory mapping tool in a variety of contexts, including collaborations with local communities, institutions and organisations serving different age groups. In this workshop, participants are asked to draw a map of their home town, with a particular focus on changes in their local environment. The two words local and global can be seen as asymmetrical, but they are inseparable, as small changes we make locally lead to big impacts globally. By looking closely at your local environment, such as trees, parks, rivers, public spaces, social communities, urban animals, etc., this workshop aims to re-invigorate and re-habituate our daily lives so that we can take responsibility for sustainability and biodiversity in our local area. All materials will be provided and no previous experience is necessary. Anyone willing to have fun with the art materials provided and share their stories with others is welcome.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fVzqysuLTPR7QAITkFKocBw4VKrXKfd9RiJasfFrTRo/edit?usp=drive_link

Workshop Option D: Creative walking and mapping with The Walkbook

Clare Oualmann_University of East London, Livingmaps Network

The Walkbook: Recipes for Walking and Wellbeing is an output from the research project Walking Publics, Walking Arts: Walking Wellbeing and Community under Covid19. The book includes 30 ‘recipes’ for creative walking created by artists in response to the projects findings around barriers to walking. In this walkshop we’ll explore recipes from the book that approach mapping and knowing; ways to connect sensorially with the environment around us and produce maps in a range of different ways. The project, and the walkshop, explore the potential of creative walking activities to build a sense of connection to place/community and seek to contribute to new creative methodologies for participation and engagement.