1.4 Making Our Maps

Today's focus was on maps, making them specific to our project and using them to get to know our planned route to the QE Olympic Park. We started the session by looking through photos taken last week when we had walked the route with a small group. As we went through them we plotted the journey on tracing paper layer over an existing map of the area. We noted key features and landmarks that were apparent in the photos, finding them on the map and tracing their locations.

We talked about how the route followed the canal in most part, rather than the roads, and how this might mean that a map for our trail might look quite different to a normal street map. We looked a couple of other examples of maps for the same Olympic Park area, and saw how they had used different drawing styles to describe different features in different ways, depending on the intended use of the map. 

We also used this discussion to talk about the circular nature of the planned art trail route. We talked about start and end points, and how a circular walk may mean that while the QEOP was the destination, the journey woful continue until you got all the way home again.

After all this discussion everyone was able to have a go making their own map, based on the existing one, using it as an underlay from which to trace off important features. It was also a good opportunity to get used to reading the map before going on the field trip next week. Everyone traced the canals and some of the key olympic buildings, but also their school, local shops and roads, and most people where able to find their home too. 

Once the features had been traced we were able to remove the underlay map to reveal just the important information left on the tracing paper. Everyone was then able to turn these tracings into a proper map by adding colour, labels and a key. I was great to see all the maps at the end of the session as they all had a slightly different focus and were clearly personal to each author.

At the end of the session we sat back together to discuss what we would do on our field trip next week. There where lots of questions and we made some notes about key things to include on the trip.