Thursday, June 28, 2018

Jason Brown Invites Map Making to the 21st Century!


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Today we talk with Community Artist and Organizer Jason Brown about his Artist in Residency, Mapping (in) Progress at 1100 Florence in Evanston.

June 26 - July 6, Jason is hoping to share collective discoveries through his Collective Cartography process with the broader public, and open up the conversation of what mapping can mean for us and our neighbors.

Photo from Art Encounter's YOUTime walking tour of Florence Avenue.


EVENTS

KIDS + MAPS
SATURDAY, JUNE 30, 10 AM -12 PM

This family-friendly event will be for parents and kids of elementary age (1st-5th grade) to explore mapping home with a kids-eye view.
We'll have a time of learning, mapping, playing, and sharing.
Click here: FREE W RSVP on Facebook
Learn more at geocommunetrics.com/1100florence/

COMMUNITY POTLUCK
SATURDAY, JUNE 30, 5:30-8:30 PM

Community is central to the Collective Cartography process.
Let's come together for an evening of conversation, observation and research! Jason Brown will be sharing from his experience leading Collective Cartography mapping sessions around Evanston. Participants will be led through observation and collective, qualitative research around a collection of large-scale, hand-drawn maps of our city and some of our neighborhoods.
Bring a dish to share, bring a friend and meet a new neighbor.
Click here to RSVP on Facebook
Learn more at geocommunetrics.com/1100florence/

More about Jason:

In October 2016 I developed a 3 hour workshop called Collective Cartography for the arts festival Big Draw Evanston. It was an intentional time where Evanston artists, leaders, and activists showed up and we worked on mapping out our collective version of Evanston. Over the course of the workshop, we created a large-scale hand-drawn map of Evanston, and what we know about its geography, economy, resources, barriers, and what we could dream up as possible solutions. Images on the map were real and fantastic - inviting deeper sociological imagination for how we see the city we live and work in.

With that first workshop of around a dozen women being so successful, I've spent the last year and a half refining the workshop. With support from the Evanston Arts Council, I have continued this mapping with small groups from the public, local training programs, and community organizations, effectively asking the question: What does equity look like spatially?

Over this time, I've collected around a dozen maps from various group workshops. Participants have been executives, bureaucrats, baristas, artists, social workers - your everyday Evanston residents and workers. Instead of leaving mapping our city - remembering its past, examining its present, planning its future - in the hands of the traditional "powers," Collective Cartography has put this honor and responsibility into the hands of the People. Any people that show up. Yet, while this process has been about equity, I have to confess it's not been the most equitable in approach, and truly not that diverse in the cast of cartographers.

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The Lisa D Show is a podcast celebrating and elevating creatives, featuring 20-minute, unedited conversations that mimic the live-radio vibe, purposefully low tech. Contact host Lisa Degliantoni at thelisadshow[at]gmail.com

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