Build community through mapping
One of the great things about involving others is that you will find people that enjoy helping on community initiatives and know other local people that might want to join in.
Invite local residents to:
- Discover and map growing spaces in your local area
- Collate the mapping data from the walks
- Put the data online for others to discover the potential growing spaces you have discovered & put some posters on the vacant land (with contact details) for others to get in touch if they are interested in growing on that land together.
This is what we did:
- Held a planning meeting to choose what we would do as part of the mapping workshop
- Made flyers to invite people to find out more about the project
- We used an online tool to quickly create ‘walking maps’ that we could print out
- Went on a walk around the area, making a note of and taking photos of potential growing spaces
- Uploaded the photos to a sharing site (our pictures are on )
- Charted the areas we had covered using Google Maps
- Added the details of each potential space to a dedicated site, setup via Crowdmap
- Discussed as a group which spaces might be useful spaces for growing on
- Used a large paper map to collectively identify, map and discuss our findings
You could have an agenda or just go on a walk and look for suitable growing spaces.
How do you know if a space is any good for growing?
- What direction is the land facing? i.e. will it get any sun
- Is there access to a water supply? e.g. a drain pipe
- Is there security?
- How big is the space? is it a big enough area for growing?
Choose your mapping tool
It is also useful to be able to get the information collected through mapping walks into a format that can be shared with others. Most useful is a spreadsheet or map – there are several ways to approach this, particularly with online collaboration:
- Paper map – we found it really useful to have a paper map for both the walks and discussion. We used http://fieldpapers.org/ for walking maps, and then printed a large version of grouo discussion.
- Spreadsheet – collect the data on each space in a spreadsheet and share with others. Tools such as Google Docs can be used to share online ()
- Easy map – it’s possible to create a quick and easy map by simply placing markers to indicate an area of interest. Google maps are very useful to do this – meaning you can quickly share an overview of identified places, or even the areas covered by the walks.
- Open Street Map / drawing maps – as well as simple markers in maps, tools such as Open Street Map enable you to draw actual areas and even record addition data. It’s worth assessing how much time and skill you have in your group for this kind of activity – and also engaging the local OSM community.
- Custom platforms – other tools do exist that are a hybrid of the above. Crowdmap enables people to locate/draw spaces, add photos and comments and generate a comprehensive map. The 596 acres platform is specifically designed for community participation around food mapping, and is open source. In these instances, there is more technical know-how required to setup and administer these tools.
With all these tools, it’s worth considering how much effort and resource you’ll need. Consider what is suitable and appropriate for local communities, especially if the goal is to bring people together and stimulate discussion and action. It can be worth evaluating the various actions around the likely time they will take to setup vs the impact they can have. You may find that a paper map on the noticeboard of the community centre is the best option!
Related
Read about how it was done differently in Manchester and Sheffield.
