I worked with 30 children from South Dartmoor Community College; together we collaborated on creating on mapping their emotional landscape.
Seven maps were created in all and were the product of a course – Emotion Mapping – I helped devise in consultation with the art and media depart at the school.
The idea behind the ‘Emotion Map’ was as an embodied memory-trigger for recounting events that were personally significant for them. Our map would record the apparently trivial conversations and events of our everyday lives and allow us to see them all simultaneously. Together we’d explore interpretative and subjective aspects of mapmaking.
Small teams working collaboratively during their art class created these maps. They started by agreeing their teams and deciding on the area they would concentrate on mapping. Over the weeks they then drew, discussed what to include and the nature of a curve in the road and how best to represent a roundabout, they rubbed out, stuck things on and re-drew their maps. We met for 1 hour a day, every week for 5 weeks.
The children choose to map towns along the A38 (Ashburton, Heathfield, Newton Abbot, and Buckfastleigh); Exeter Rugby ground; Exeter Centre; Tesco’s; a Bike Trail; and Bovey Tracey.
Their maps were then digitised and re-drawn in Illustrator by myself. Where I altered things; adding details and amending fine points. I then designed a layout and look for the maps to tie them together. This digital file was then taking back to school for further fine tuning and approval by each group.
The goal of the course was for the children to work both individually and collectively in excavating narratives of people, places, events and artefacts, representing the emotions, opinions and desires of local people and then create their own maps from all of the information they’d collected. The course explored the interpretative and subjective aspects of mapmaking. Our map would record the apparently trivial conversations and events of our everyday lives and allow us to see them all simultaneously. Recounting events that were personally significant for them.
The children jumped into the project, coming up with ideas that I’d not enticpated like creating 3D maps. I had ideas about the kind of map we would create, but it all transmogrified into something else which turned out great. Making these maps with the children reminded me what fun it is to make maps
This project reflects my strategy of attempting to engage the social, cultural and natural histories of specific sites and territories. And uncover the unique characteristics that determine a sense of place.
See the maps we created and read more at http://tinyurl.com/6aje4f4
