For this task, we had to pick a point in the centre of the town in
question and ask people to draw a map to a location on the edge of the town.
For both Longford and Castlebar, I picked the largest and busiest retail centre in the town, which was Tesco, reflecting the theme of market on a Saturday afternoon. I asked locals to draw me a map to the train station, which created a boundary or edge in both cases.
In Longford, fast food outlets, supermarkets and the cathedral featured as prominent landmarks. There were a number of different routes, both in cars and for pedestrian traffic in comparison to Castlebar, which was all car driven. The routes generally deviated from each other only in small way
s, a
s the distance from point to point isn’t huge. One map introdu
ced three dimensional elements and all maps were drawn landscape.
In Castlebar, there was a huge variety in the route that was taken. Roundabouts, street and destination names and directional arrows fea
tured prominently in comparison to Longford. The Green or Mall, which is a public open space, was mentioned in a few drawings. As part of the Castlebar series, I drew th
e last map myself, and was the only person to draw portrait and to include a north pointer.
The exercise was interesting in that the people I met with showed various levels of enthusiasm. People I knew and younger people were the most interested and would spend longer drawing. Very few maps showed an accurate cartographic representation. It was also interesting to note the approaches a
nd different starting positions on the page of the various people.
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