Have your say about the past, present and future!

The 2025 M.A.P Project team are making maps to record the past, the present and your ideas about the future regarding access to local food, public transport and paths, local employment, home energy efficiency etc.  So far 600+ local people through out ward 7 have shared and mapped their knowledge and ideas. The summary reports are available on this website by area.

Examples of our mapping projects: Food Mapping

We did a drop in food mapping event in an unused shop on the High Street over two weeks leading up to the local food gathering. At the drop in people could map their knowledge about where we got our food in the past (i.e through the Dig for Victory years), where they get their food now and where they would like to get their food in the future. We used a separate map for each topic (past, present, future). We used post-it notes to enable people to record and map their knowledge and ideas.

We also used an H-Form which is a tool designed to enable people to self evaluate “How much of the food you eat is locally produced?”. With this tool they could give themselves a score between 0 (no local food eaten) and 10 (all food eaten is local). More important than these scores are people’s reasons for their scores which they record themselves onto post-its. We asked them to also record their ideas for making it easier for them to access locally produced/ grown food and to map where (onto the future maps).

We also mapped local knowledge and ideas regarding Public Transport, Paths, Local employment, home energy efficiency and skills

Because we know that only a small proportion of the population dropped into the Map Hub (we tracked by age and gender and area) or come to meetings – we recruited local people from each of the settlement areas in our Ward and trained them in Community Mapping techniques to carry out a wide spread survey (as above but getting out to where people live/ work/ schools etc). 20+ local facilitators where trained by me in mapping and h-forms and they where paid to carry out the survey work in and around where they live.

At this point 600+ people of all ages and areas have had their say.

We are now looking to study the 1940s Farm Survey Maps at the National Archives to map more about the past. We are also getting out and about doing farm visits and mapping past, present and future. We will be interviewing more local key elderly people to continue to map details about the past.

Once we have consolidated all the map survey outputs then we will continue to publish them on the website. You can find summary reports for all areas now e.g. http://www.sustainingdunbar.org/2010/03/26/dunbar-central-2025-m-a-p-project/ If you go under categories you will be able to see all reports by area as they are done.

If you are interested in  training in Community Mapping and Action Planning and we could come your way to train up local people to do as we are doing. Call Susan Guy to discuss 01368 866 920.