nottoscale.battlecat.net

Not To Scale is a project exploring people’s understandings of place, identity (self and national), home and geography through freehand map drawing.

I try to carry a notebook with me at all times. As I’ve spent several years travelling and living overseas, I usually sketch a map of Australia so that I can explain where my hometown Adelaide is in relation to the Sydney Opera House and Uluru.  My outlines of Australia look vaguely correct as Tasmania seems to be in the right place – but the bits up north and to the west of the country are usually rather vague.

Last year when I had first moved to Sheffield in the UK, I asked a friend’s mother to draw me a map – I had no idea where the county of Suffolk was in relationship to Sheffield. Just as my maps of Australia are vague about some details, the map which Bridget drew resembled Britain but with some differences.

Even if someone else’s map of their country or region has some deficiencies, I figure that I’ll learn a lot more about a place from someone who’s lived there.

Since May 2008 I’ve asked an ever increasing group of people to draw me a map of a place where they’ve lived or travelled. The results are informative and often amusing, especially when the map creation is .

Currently I’m collating basic scans of the maps into the blog not to scale, but in the future I’m hoping to combine them electronically to make an interactive multi-layered world map.  At the moment, my collection is rather focused on the North so I’m going to wait until I have more of Asia, the Americas, Africa and the Middle East to create a world map.

PARTICIPATION

If you’d like to make a hand-drawn map for not to scale please contact me for my postal address. I’m fascinated with the limits of people’s knowledge and personal bias regarding distance and proximity so I’d prefer maps drawn from memory.

I’m also really keen to collect , particularly if the map is narrated or part of a group drawing activity.