This the second film made by Colville Primary School on Portobello Road Market.

The latest digital:works project, Stall Stories; four films exploring the history of London Street Markets. Street markets are a living, breathing part of London’s history. They are part of the fabric of the city and each market reflects the character of its neighbourhood. For hundreds of years markets have provided livelihoods for people living in London and a source of affordable (and sometimes luxury) produce and items.

www.stallstories.org.uk

Click here to view the embedded video.

This the first film made by Stockwell Primary School on Brixton Market.

stallstories.org.uk

I know things are never just B&W and I don’t really agree with sticking labels on things, but what do you think; can you help with this question?

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 the artist, Joe Stevens, strategy of engaging the social, cultural and natural histories of specific sites and territories. How I attempt to uncover the unique characteristics that determine a sense of place.

This work was informed and inspired by the magnificent blog at makingmaps.net – highly recommended reading.  “I’m particular interest in developing this work and engaging further in planning, urban history, urban geography, landscape architecture, participatory mapping and GIS, subversive cartography, counter-mapping, and psychogeography. Or anyone who enjoys creative mapping.”