Grassroots Mapping is a series of participatory mapping projects involving communities in cartographic dispute. Seeking to invert the traditional power structure of cartography, the grassroots mappers used helium balloons and kites to loft their own “community satellites” made with inexpensive digital cameras.

NuVu workshop progress, PBS IdeaLab blog post

April 21st, 2010 by Jeffrey Warren

NuVu Boston harbor flight

We’ve been doing some great building and flying at the NuVu workshop this week and last; I wrote a blog post about it for the PBS IdeaLab blog. Also check out the photos on Flickr

Read the article

An excerpt:

This isn’t exactly your typical high school activity. My workshop at Beaver Country Day School is part of a series of studio design-style courses that make up the NuVu Studio — an experimental education project where the students get hands-on exposure to topics like alternative energy and “the future of labor.”

It differs quite a bit from other workshops I’ve taught in places like Amman, Jordan and Lima, Peru, in that the idea of “subjective geography” seems somewhat less immediate. I didn’t have to explain to anyone in the West Bank, for example, that mapping is not a neutral act, or that it’s a social construction with a profound political meaning and agenda. But here in Walnut Hill that seems a bit distant…

NuVu Boston harbor flight

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