Map Cards: Creative Mapping for Place Dialogue

Abstract

Creative mapping is a type of critical observational drawing that uses cartographic art to negotiate personal visions, social constructions, and objective representations of the world. Geographers have been experimenting with this method to produce their own creative maps and in the process have begun to explore the effects and implications of these works for engaging with the places and relationships of research in professional and personal life. This essay puts theoretical work on researcher vulnerability into conversation with scholarship on place dialogue to explore how creative mapping facilitates relationship accountability in research. The transformation in the author’s creative-mapping practice illustrates the agency of place to communicate the realities and responsibilities of relationship through art, and suggests how creative mapping enhances our capacity for place dialogue through artistic methods that negotiate the more-than-human entanglements of research.

Key Words:

• creative mapping
• observational drawing
• place agency
• place dialogue
• vulnerability

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I acknowledge the Cheslatta Carrier Nation as the original people of Cheslatta Lake and the headwaters of the Nechako River. I felt the spirit of family each time you invited me to Cheslatta Territory, and I thank you for your friendship, support, and ongoing mentorship in the research relationship. Mussi cho. I also thank my family closer to home—wife Kristi and three children, my mother and father, siblings and aunts and uncles and more—all of whom have helped me grow in my relationships. Finally, I wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this manuscript who provided some of the most helpful and insightful feedback I have ever received.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Soren C. Larsen

SOREN C. LARSEN is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include place-based philosophies, politics, and pedagogies.