Mapping Sustainability and Biodiversity in our Local Area

• Jina Lee - Presenting

  University of Arts London, Livingmaps Network

ABSTRACT

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.

Maps are used in public health to plan health interventions, monitor outbreaks, identify vulnerable populations, and communicate health data. They are invaluable visualization and analysis tools that scientists and researchers use to address health problems. In this participatory workshop, we offer an introduction to complex world histories of health and disease mapping and explore how and why maps are made today, how they inform policies and outcomes, and how they influence the ways in which we visualise and understand current public health issues.

The first half of the session features a series of brief talks on the history and practices of map-making. In the second half of the session, we invite attendees to make, annotate, and share their own maps, reflecting on their own health experiences or knowledge of health matters. This exercise will be guided by experts from the Living Maps Network--a collective of researchers, community activists, artists and mapmakers using participatory counter-mapping to help communities drive social change.

In addition to providing a creative output for participants to share, explore, and interpret health mapping practices on their own terms, we also invite attendees to reflect on what kinds of information these representations do (or don't) show and consider the ongoing social, political, and historical processes that shape how we visualise and understand health.

To keep our energy and excitement up, light refreshments will be served.

This event is free. However, since capacity is limited, we ask all interested participants to RSVP by securing a "Save me a Spot!" ticket (available through this Eventbrite page).

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mapping-the-publics-health-tickets-735389378427?aff=oddtdtcreator

Mapping entangled mobilities: Using participatory counter-cartography to explore the migration of objects and people across (neo)colonial spatialities

• Sarah Linn_ Manchester Metropolitan University, England

• Jina Lee_ University of the Arts London, England

• Migrant Youth Researchers

• Jennifer Cromwell_ Manchester Metropolitan University, England

• Caitlin Nunn_ Manchester Metropolitan University, England

This paper explores the creation of a counter-map that represents the entangled mobilities of ancient objects and contemporary migrants. Currently exhibited in Manchester Museum as part of the Ancient History, Contemporary Belonging project, the map was produced by a creative cartographer in dialogue with project researchers and young people from Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Palestinian and Kurdish backgrounds. The map was developed from youth researchers’ personal ‘journey maps’ and narratives and archival research into ancient objects from their region of origin, drawn from the museum collection. Reflecting the complexities and ambiguities of migration, the map renders places, borders and movements as fractured, partial and mutable. In doing so, it confronts the (neo)colonial forces that shape maps and mobilities. Simultaneously, this creative representation serves the practical-political purpose of safeguarding youth researchers from the risks of challenging fixed imaginaries of spatial-temporal borders within a heritage institution - and city - grappling with their own colonial legacies.

PROGRAMME

Dispelling the Fog of War: Phil Cohen will look back on the Frontline Cartography series and draw out some of the key issues raised by contributors.

Unmaking the Map: Alisa Oleva and Debbie Kent will draw on recent work to discuss their arts based approach to counter-mapping

Every Dog is a Lion in its Own Home: Natalia Baryshovets will screen excerpts from a puppet workshop she ran with Ukrainian children in London and discuss some of the issues of working with this group.

Talking Maps and the Diasporic Experience: Jina Lee will present and discuss material from her mapping workshops with Korean immigrants and with diasporic communities in Manchester and London.

Seeking Refuge in the Folds of Maps: Sana Murrani will present and discuss fifteen maps based on her ongoing work with Iraqis still living inside Iraq who have been subjected to war and violence for decades now.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Natalia Baryshovets is from Ukraine. She is a children’s entertainer who works with many Ukrainian community organisations in London.

Phil Cohen is a co-founder of the Livingmaps Network and co-editor with Mike Duggan of New Directions in Radical Cartography (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019) . His latest book, Things Ain’t What They Used To Be: Notebooks from a Once and Future Time will be published by eyeglass books this month.

Debbie Kent is a member of the Livingmaps Network and a mapping artist who makes work around walking, sound and the city. She is half of a collaboration called the Demolition Project (with Alisa Oleva) which has made site-responsive walks and works for festivals and galleries in many cities around Europe and the UK .

Jina Lee is the director of the Livingmaps Network and a mapping artists whose work focuses on the collapse of territorial boundaries between social, political and geographical space. She recently completed a diasporic mapping project with young people in Manchester .

Alisa Oleva is the engagement curator at Pushkin House. Her artistic practice includes performance and audio walks exploring issues of urban choreography and archaeology as well as the city as a site of intimate encounter. He work has been shown in many galleries in Europe and the UK.

Sana Murrani is the founder of the Displacement Studies Research Network and co-founder of the Justice and Imagination in Global Displacement research collective. Sana is currently writing a book based on her research, to be published by Bloomsbury next year.