The first map of the Mapio Lleisiau’r Tir/Mapping Land Voices is starting to emerge. This is a draft. No map is innocent, and with OpenStreetMap, no map is ever finished. Rather, like Wikipedia, it is an ongoing participatory collaboration from a community with the outside world. It is conspicuously partial, and so “decolonises” that myth of a singular truth.
[We are finding that analytics maps about human needs and access within these communities are extensively pointless: mapping where there are no buses, public toilets, shops, clinics and schools turns out extreme metrics: there IS no mains sewage, mains gas, etc. In areas of ‘no-car-share-culture’, the fact of three buses a week mean 100% of the population depend upon cars. No public toilets in villages makes for an ‘all-red’ data layer.
So more useful maps emerging show us a particular preference, priority indicator set defined by communities.]
Wellbeing maps can provide analytics about human needs and access within upland areas suffering from rural isolation factors. But these are also particular, showing the distinct character of a community by its self-elected indicator rather than being defined by tourism/external and remote institutions.
Click and rummage round, to see how past contextualises present, and qualitative anecdote shows a perspective which can be used to make quantitative measurements: lived experience maps can narrate but also celebrate a community life historically starved of resources like public transport.
Maps visualise distances from services, highlight place name changes (cultural changes), and image rural depopulation at work (e.g. named farms which have become ruins within living memory). Community visibility is expressed in terms of ingenuity, coping mechanisms, and self-organising potential for micro-hydro energy, small enterprise, and technical skills regeneration. Most of all, maps can make a case for resource allocation such as systemic and administrative support for communities well-capable of self organising their wellbeing. Many clearly remember times when community electricity was normal, public transport was reliable, and each person in the community participated…..Onward!