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.

Stitching in progress, video by Kristian Hansen

May 14th, 2010 by Jeffrey Warren

In-progress stitch of the oil spill at Chandeleur Islands from Saturday

A couple updates: we’re now deep in the stitching process. Above is a preview; we hope to post one or two finished stitches today.

Kris Ansin of Tulane and Louisiana Bucket Brigade is coordinating mapping teams on the ground. (He’s leading a trip today). We’ve had some donations but if you’re able to, please donate to support our efforts. Even $50 will buy us a tank of helium. $100 buys us a new kite.

In the meantime we’ve had some great support from Kristian Hansen of TungstenMonkey, a local production company. Kristian documented our training session last Saturday and has posted an intro video to our project which gets across a lot of information in a very short time. Thanks Kristian!

Grassrooots Mapping: Field Mapping Training from TungstenMonkey on Vimeo.

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