Are We That Map?

The aim of Are We That Map? was to co-develop participatory map-making workshops that actively includes and engages children and young people with a lived experience of learning disabilities/difficulties (LD/D).

The project was a partnership between Newham based Rosetta Arts, purpleSTARS, RIX Centre, University of East London (UEL) and Living Maps Network.

Employing a creative, iterative approach we developed workshops that would be explorative and happy to embrace the unknown.

We aimed to develop a series of exercises that could ‘wake us up’ to notice how our bodies' sensory experiences create our own unique experience of the world and how we could share this making a map.

This work feeds into Living Maps Young Citizens Atlas.

Working together in a unique collaboration, we devised, delivered, reviewed and refined a Map Making workshop package in which people with the lived experience of Learning Difficulties and Differences LD/D developed
and facilitated, working to their strengths alongside other expert artists and educators.

A co-production approach was used, that included people
with a lived experience of a LD/D during the development workshops and as facilitators during workshops in school.

Following a robust series of development workshops, we carefully designed, prepared and identified possible activities to include in the Map Making workshop package.

We invited members from the Tower Project that supports people with LD/D in Tower Hamlets London to help develop and test our Map Making workshop activities to see what would work and what would not.