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Maps for Making Change
Maps for Making Change – Using Geographical Mapping Techniques to Support Struggles for Social Justice in India is a five-month project that provides activists and supporters of movements and campaigns for progressive social change in India with the opportunity to, for the first time, collectively debate and explore in detail the potential of digital mapping as a tool to support their work. Participants in the project reflect the rich diversity of India's struggles. They include grassroots activists, NGO workers, artists and researchers working on a dizzying array of issues: from tracing the mobility trajectories of migrant workers constructing Bangalore's Metro, to mobilising slum dwellers to critically engage with Mumbai's new Development Plan; from monitoring human rights violations by the state in Chhattisgarh to mapping services for sex workers in Delhi. The project consists of three workshops, with time in between for participants to reflect and develop their own mapping projects, and to start creating maps to implement these. Throughout the project, both in the workshops and online, participants are supported and assisted by a group of committed digital activists and techies from within India and abroad. The grand finale of the project will take place at the end of the third workshop, in April 2010, when some of the maps will be officially launched in a public event that will also provide an opportunity for participants to share their experiences with a wider audience.
Maps for Making Change is organised by The Centre for Internet and Society, in collaboration with Tactical Tech.
Why Maps for Making Change?
The Maps for Making Change Call for Applications (which closed on 21 November 2009) provided the background and explained the rationale behind this project:
"Most of us think of maps as representations of territory. But have you ever wondered why bastis, slums, unauthorised colonies and monuments of minorities and poor people rarely are given prominence on maps – or at times are even absent altogether? All too often only seats of power, such as big hospitals, the colonies of the rich and diplomatic missions, receive detailed mention. This is because maps simultaneously also function as representations of relations of power and control: which places, communities, historical monuments, townships, colonies and roads are highlighted on a map reflects the power and control that various communities and classes possess or lack. In modern times, this is particularly obvious in planning processes, which incorporate maps as crucial tools in villages and cities alike. To challenge the practice of privileging the powerful on maps, and to create maps from the margins and of margins, therefore has emerged as an important aspect as well as a tool of our fights against injustice in society.
Today, with the emergence of new technologies such as GPS and the Internet, mapping techniques have advanced beyond the confines of professional cartographers and can be mobilised and used to fight for social justice by anyone with an interest in maps".
It is to provide activists and supporters of social movements and campaigns in India with an opportunity to explore how geographical mapping techniques might help facilitate or support their advocacy and awareness raising campaigns and understanding of the power relations in society, that Maps for Making Change was born.
(To read the complete Call for Applications, please click here).
Workshops
In the first Maps for Making Change workshop, participants examined the various ways in which maps can be used to maximise advocacy efforts, the political and ethical aspects and implications of mapping in India and elsewhere and the new possibilities provided by digital mapping technologies. They also finetuned their own project proposals in the light of what they learned in the workshop, and drew up individual road maps to ensure they would come with the necessary preparation to the second event.
The second Maps for Making Change workshop allowed participants to step-by-step develop their own mapping projects in practice. Using data they had brought themselves, participants thought through ethical, political and rights issues as well as questions of information design while exploring technologies hands-on. Throughout the workshop, participants worked with the assistance and support of digital activists and techies from within and outside India.
During the third and final workshop in the Maps for Making Change project, participants will fine-tune and polish their maps; explore ways to connect with broader movements and disseminate their maps among target audiences; and reflect on their own experiences so as to distill learnings that can help us decide where to go from here.
The workshop will close with an exploration of and conversation on maps for making change that is open to everyone. Do join us for the public event "Exploring Maps for Making Change", taking place at the Centre for Internet and Society on 28 April 2010, from 4 pm onwards. For more details, please click here.
CIS: Map
Visthar: Map
Projects
Participants in Maps for Making Change are all working to develop their own projects. More information on some of these projects and the journey that is their development can be found below:
- Tools of the Trade: maps for sex workers and sex worker advocacy
- The City Demolished
- Labour issues and pollution problems in mining in Panna District, Madhya Pradesh (MP), India
- Stepwells of Vadodara, Gujarat
- Green Desert Map
- Large development projects siphoning resources: BIAL - A case study
- IDPS Camp in Assam
- Mapping dissent: displacement and eviction in India
- Issue Mapping Portal For Kerala
- Behind the Tin Sheets - film on the people working on the metro in Bangalore
- Bangalore by Rail
- Corporate investment and Adivasi displacement in Chhattisgarh
- Ringing the Bell: Violence against women and Interventions
- Invisibles of a metropolis: Mapping pavement communities of Mumbai
- mining belt of Goa
And a special contribution, galvanised by the second Maps for Making Change workshop! heritagewalks.in
Resource Persons and Facilitators
The Maps for Making Change project can count on the inputs of a a wide range of facilitators and resource persons, both during and in between workshops. Facilitators who have been extensively involved in the project include:
- Jai Sen
- Lars Bromley
- Henry Addo
- Hardeep Singh Rai
- Alagesa Pandian
- Madhuresh Kumar
- Kate Morioka
- Anja Kovacs
Long term special assistance has been provided by:
Maps for Making Change Organisers
The second Maps for Making Change workshop was co-organised with the generous support of Media Shala.
Maps for Making Change in the Media
- Drawing Maps for Change, by Deepa Kurup, The Hindu, 3 January 2010.
- Techies Mapping Change, by Renuka Phadnis, the Bangalore Mirror, 7 December 2009 (republished in a slightly different version as Want to Bring Social Change? This Map Shows the Way, SiliconIndia, 8 December 2009).
- Shanty Home, by Jaideep Sen, Time Out Bengaluru, 13-26 November 2009.
Useful Mapping Resources and Links
Useful Resources
- Tactical Tech's Maps for Advocacy is a guide to using maps in advocacy that explains the mapping process for advocacy through case studies, descriptions of procedures and methods, a review of data sources as well as a glossary of mapping terminology.
- Mikel Maron's presentation for the second Maps for Making Change workshop provides an introduction to OpenStreetMap for Activism.
- Lars Bromley's presentation, prepared for the second Maps for Making Change workshop, on An Introduction to GIS provides a background as to why and when GIS can be useful as a tool in advocacy.
- Henry Addo's presentation, prepared for the second Maps for Making Change workshop explains in a hands-on manner how to work with Google's My Maps.
- Hardeep Singh Rai's presentation, prepared for the second Maps for Making Change workshop explains basics of GPS.
