Inspired By...Map

As part of my research into how people are using geoweb technologies, I've been interviewing users and developers of digital media applications related to place. While searching for innovative projects along this line, I found out about an arts association near where I live who had created an amazing online community mapping project.

The project, Inspired By...Map, was created by East End Arts as a way to capture the arts and oral histories of the people living and visiting in Toronto's east end. Soliciting contributions from people connected to the neighbourhood, they have created an online, interactive map of people's meaningful places. Through a variety of modalities (images, text, and videos) people's stories and creations are put on the map of Toronto.

I had the chance to ask Tanya Oleksuik and Cindy Rozeboom some questions about their impressive project.

Glen: What motivated you to develop the Inspired By...Map?

Tanya & Cindy:
In 2014, East End Arts was only a year old and developing our organizational sense of self. As a Local Arts Service Organization, we are mandated to provide support for a specific geographic area of Toronto.

We were wondering what, if anything, actually unifies the people within this area, given that the communities are, as with all of Toronto, diverse and constantly changing. Unable to come to any conclusions about who east-enders were, we decided to examine where.  If the people are different, but the place is the same – what then? Inspired By was sparked by wondering how the actual physical spaces that we share impact and/or inspire those who pass through them.

Inspired By was made possible by a grant from the Ontario Cultural Development Fund.

Glen: What efforts have you taken to get community involvement in creating the content for Inspired By...Map?

Tanya & Cindy:
We have held both facilitated workshops with community groups, as well as have an ongoing open-call for submissions online.

Community workshops have been led by Community Story Strategies and, so far, have included a job-seeking club at Riverdale Hub, a recycled fashion collective at the Newcomer Women’s Service, a summer camp of children at Community Centre 55, and an open public session that toured the Winter Stations in 2015.

Local kids working on their creations for the Inspired By...Map

Each workshop starts with a group photo-taking walk around an area, followed by a writing session where participants choose one image and react to it – either in writing or verbally.

Glen: What has the response been to the project?

Tanya &; Cindy:
The response has been really positive and heartwarming. Everyone has a personal story behind their favourite spots in the city, and most love to share those stories with others. Each story shared adds a new layer to the map of inspired places.

We held an Inspired By viewing party in 2015 and a room full of people listened, watched, learned, and laughed along with the wide range of stops along the map. With a range of creative expressions in the submissions, the audience was taken through visual, written, and audio stories of reminiscence, longing, love, and joy, all inspired by East End places. The evening continued with the sharing of even more stories, including people adding their own layers of memory, history, and experience to the places marked on the map.

Glen: In terms of the content people have created has there been anything surprising?

Tanya & Cindy:
Interestingly, many of the submissions involve memories – the image of what IS brought back thoughts of what WAS. It is also interesting to see the differences in tone and interpretation of seemingly unrelated objects – an excited child remembering hockey practice with their dad looking at a fence, speculations on social change drawn from a crack in the pavement. It makes one wonder how much we “see” with our eyes, and how much is brought to any picture from our own individual storehouse of experiences and expectations.

People are inspired by so many different and unique things. The stories people share about what makes a place special to them reminds us that inspiration can be found in unexpected places and are beautifully unique in meaning to individuals.

Glen: How do you think this map will have people consider or reconsider Toronto's East End?

Tanya & Cindy:
The map is still a work-in-progress, so it will be interesting to see how neighbourhood changes will be reflected. Someone may have mapped a spot that in a couple years’ time may be transformed into something completely different. The map allows people to mark a place and time and capture a memory or moment.

Glen: Is there anything else you'd like to add or that people should know about this project?

Tanya & Cindy:
We'd love for the map to continue to expand. Anyone who lives, works, and moves through the east end is invited to contribute to the project and help it grow, one place at a time.

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This project is not only a really interesting and imaginative glimpse into the places and stories of east end Toronto, but also a model for others regardless of their location. This project is a great example of how to use community mapping efforts and geoweb technologies to capture and share something meaningful to people.

Whether you live in Toronto or not, I highly recommend getting inspired by Inspired By...Map.

Creating Counter Maps & Shared Geographies with Locative Media

Three months ago, I switched my PhD advisor and with it comes a new direction in my work.  My focus is still on locative media and sense of place (as with my prior research and publishing on this topic). But now I'm looking at how people are using the features of locative media (a.k.a location-based services) to define their own place, share this with others (i.e. friends or the public) and thereby shape their sense of place.

As this is a new angle on the topic, I'd love to hear people's feedback. Below is a summary of the major strands in my current work:

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Having a relationship to the places we encounter and inhabit is considered a foundational human experience (Heidegger, 1996). As we interact and learn about places, we bestow meaning on such places, forming the mental concept of a sense of place (Tuan, 1976; Relph, 1977). Scholars have examined how various factors, such as individual attitudes, memories, values, interests and aesthetic sensibility shape how individuals form a sense of place (Steele, 1981). Sense of place is more than merely perception of physical stimuli and a conception of place as a meaningful location; it can be an embodied and metaphysical experience, shaping our notions of existence in the world.

For over forty years, scholars have discussed the conditions of modern life that make establishing or maintaining a positive sense of place difficult. Two of the main threats are considered to be contemporary urban planning and architecture (Jacobs, 1992; Relph, 1976) and international and domestic migrations (Connerton, 2009). Connerton (2009) and Farham (2012) argue that a deeper knowing of a place assists in forming a sense of place, yet various forces have resulted in people either forgetting or never knowing information about places that would aid in forming sense of place.

Humans have created and used information about places since prehistory, whether in the form of crude maps drawn in the sand or cave drawings of hunting grounds, to guide their experiences and knowledge of the world (Garfield, 2012; Jacob, 2006). Yet the information about locations that are readily available has often been hegemonic (Bidwell & Winschiers-Theosphilus, 2012; Farham, 2012; Thompson, 2007). The production and distribution of geographic information has been restricted for centuries as a means to control the masses (Crampton, 2008; Harley, 2001; Monmonier, 1996). In addition, map-making has traditionally been a professional activity, dominated by an elite with specialized training and credentials and access to necessary software and data (Tulloch, 2007)

Social critics such as Debord have been critical of such hegemonic control over place information and representation, noting that officials create a false notion amongst the public that the places they encounter are void of meaning: “On this spot nothing will ever happen, and nothing ever has” (Debord, 1983, p. 177). Debord asserts that forces of power attempt to create apathy in citizens by denuding spaces of their meaning. Debord and the psychogeographic movement he founded in the 1960s have staged interventions to counter these forces (in the forms of dérives and détournements, see Debord, 1956a and Debord, 1956a). More recently, critical geography scholars have cried for more open and egalitarian access to the power to define our spaces, such as Harvey’s notion of the “the right to the city” (2008), Soja’s “spatial justice” concept (2010), or Kitchen, Linehan, O’Callaghan, and Lawton’s “public geographies” (2013).

Concurrent to hegemonic geographical information, people have continued to produce and share their own accounts and interpretations of places through various means. The advent of open-access geographic data and mapping software (such as Google Earth or OpenStreetMaps) combined with distributed access to the Internet (this suite of resources is often called the “geoweb”, see Corbett, 2013) have made it more feasible for people to create and share their own geographic information. This practice, whether conducted on a desktop computer or a mobile device, can take the form of participatory mapping (Corbett, 2013; Tulloch, 2007) or participatory geographic information systems (Dunn, 2007; Elwood, 2006; Young, 2013). Such participatory efforts can consists not only of adding locations or descriptive data to a map or GIS software, but can also apply to place information, and can take the form of narratives, personal reflections, or imagery related to a given place.

One form of participatory mapping is counter mapping. Counter mapping was inspired by Bunge’s work in the 1970s. Bunge mapped urban poverty in the United States. Scholars using counter mapping took Bunge’s social justice objectives to help marginalized groups argue for territorial or socio-political claims (Rundstrom, 2009). The method involves specialists in cartography, geographic information systems, and/or place-based narratives (e.g. anthropologists, geographers, cartographers) working with groups to define and map their places and routes and to describe their associations and relationships with these places (Rundstrom, 2009). Counter mapping has frequently been conducted to support indigenous people’s land rights claims (e.g., Cooke, 2003; Corbett, 2013; Harrison, 2011; Hodgson, 2002; Peluso, 1995). Recent studies have extended counter mapping to new groups and locales, such as minority children in ghettoized urban locations (Taylor, 2013) and conservation efforts in protected, wilderness areas (Harris, & Hazen, 2006). Taylor’s study appears to be one of the first studies to use mobile devices with GPS in the creation of counter maps.

Conceptually similar to counter maps, but with differing objectives is the concept of shared geographies. The term “shared geographies”, although not a standard term, is used in human geography studies to denote groups sharing and collectively creating information and representations of place (e.g., Barker & Pickerill, 2012; Gatrell, 2002; Taylor, 2009). The degree of sharing and openness can be seen as within a continuum from fully public to privately shared geographies. Barkhuus, Brown, Bell, Sherwood, Hall & Chalmers (2008) elaborate: “Private geographies are the mutual sense of different places that a social group share and which differentiate that group from others. The private geography allows members of a group to draw upon ‘shared in-common’ senses of different places, and what those places mean for the group”. As with Taylor’s study, Barkhuus et al. appear to be one of the first studies to examine how people are using locative technology to create shared geographies.

Geoweb technologies combined with emerging mobile, locative technology are increasingly helping people to capture and preserve a diverse range of information on place, virtually tie it to that place, and broadcast it to others. Although locative media is not without precedent amongst other media forms in this ability, recent scholarship is beginning to identify the unique aspects of locative media. The defining aspect of locative media is its ability to recognize its physical location and customize user experiences and content accordingly (Brimicombe & Li, 2009). Locative media also offers the possibility of a multiplicity of content and of ubiquity of access (Farham, 2013). Schianchi in her work with locative media (2013) identifies two of its unique qualities: 1) its ability to subvert physical laws, such as gravity and portability, and 2) its ability to subvert property laws, such as copyright, territory, and access. Farham has examined how locative media by brining the virtual and physical together for people has created a new form of embodied sense of place (2013). Despite the increasing growth in the use of mobile locative media (Zickuhr, 2012), the role of this technology may have upon our relationships to place has not been fully studied.

Locative media has been shown to provoke new interpretations and relationships with place through creative and playful interaction with place (Hjorth, 2011; Lemos, 2011; McGarrigle, 2010) as well as artistic interventions (Lodi, 2013; Schianchi, 2013). It is also increasingly being seen as a means to counter hegemonic representations (de Souza & Hjorth, 2009, Gazzard, 2011; Hjorth, 2011; Farham, 2012; Lapenta, 2011; Shirvanee, 2006).

Through the creation of shared geographies and counter maps via locative media people are able to create and share their own information and representations of their spaces in powerful and meaningful ways. Such acts may have the potential to shape a person’s relationship to their places and ultimately their sense of place.

This leads to my research questions:

1. How do people use locative media to create counter-maps and shared geographies?
2. How, and in what ways, does such use of locative media affect an individual’s sense of place?

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As I mentioned, I'd love to hear people's reaction to this topic and to get any suggestions for useful literature or groups using locative media in this way.


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References

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Barkhuus, L., Brown, B., Bell, M., Sherwood, S., Hall, M. & Chalmers, M. (2008). From awareness to repartee: Sharing location within social groups. In Proceedings of the Twenty-sixth Annual SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 497–506). New York, NY: ACM.

Bidwell, N. J., & Winshiers-Theophilus, H. (2012). Extending connections between land and people digitally: Designing with rural Herero communities in Namibia. In E. Giaccardi (Ed.), Heritage and social media: Understanding heritage in a participatory culture (pp. 197–216). New York, NY: Routledge.
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