Having collected initial material on Deptford and the Stephen Lawrence Centre we made a one minute film about Deptford on a Saturday morning, which acts as a call out to participants joining the project.
We started the project with three questions:
How do you get to Deptford?
How do you stay in Deptford?
How do you leave Deptford?
We wanted to pursue these issues through mapping.
Hence our first open event was a Mapping Day at the Stephen Lawrence Centre where the project is based, which included a sensory walk of the David Adjaye designed building.
Following an initial discussion on the terms “space” and “place” where we covered the everyday uses of these words, we introduced the idea and practice of mapping.
“Space” and “Place”
Amanda: It was interesting to see phrases like “give me some space” used by participants, there was a struggle to verbalise notions of space specifically, though there is a greater notion of space that we all feel we inherently know though find it hard to express, I think a phrase like “give me some space” is a very clear example of that.
Rastko: It seemed to me that it was easier for participants to relate to the word “place”, perhaps because it is less abstract. Two words that were linked to it were location, and value.
Mapping
We asked ourselves the questions: What are maps? Who makes them and why? What constitutes a map? What are the uses of a map?
We looked at well known (AZ, Ordinance Survey, Google Earth, architectural plans) as well as less known (emotional, sensory) types of maps.
The exercise allowed participants to begin to look at how they could make their own maps, and that we did not have to rely on official maps, sources or ways of mapping. What was essential to the use of a map was its readability to a group and the act of participation in the making and changing of it. Read the rest of this entry »
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