Ruritage Crete Object Mapping workshop. Working with facilitators across Europe and the Crete landscape enabled co-development to build - the visual method Object Mapping became even richer in the way it worked with materials from the landscape and data. Photograph Dominica Williamson
Ruritage
Ruritage worked with organisations at a local level and assisted them to regenerate their landscape and heritage through locally driven actions. I co-created visual methods so people who lived in the landscape could say how they felt about changes in their landscape.
Tagscape workshop at the the third edition of the International Summer School - Learning by Game Creation - organized by a Joint Project of the Politecnico di Torino and University of California, 1st to 8th September 2019, Torino. A mapped landscape - making an Object Map. Photograph Andy Hughes.
Actions worked across the areas of pilgrimage, resilience, sustainable local food production, integrated landscape management, migration and art and festivals.
My role was to build on visual methods I had co-created, and make a ‘how to do tool kit’ that could be used to train facilitators in visual methods (as well as data collection through the use of apps).
The tool kit called My Cult-Rural Toolkit was used to help co-monitor the rural regeneration; it captured aspects of the changes that had happened in the landscape as a result of the regeneration. Through the visual methods and ethnographic storytelling, people who lived in the landscape could say how they felt about changes in their landscape.
Physical tool from the Cultrural Tool Kit, Ruritage. There are also digital tools attached to the kit and a physical tool box. Design work Dominica Williamson. Photographs: Andy Hughes.
Crucially, I tested and carried out ideas with facilitators who were from the organisations that worked on the ground with people who lived in the landscape. As a result of these workshops, I was able to build a kit that facilitators could access online but also via a physical box of materials. In addition, facilitators completed online training with myself and the team.
Three visual methods are part of the toolkit – Object Mapping, Walking Maps and Mini-Landscapes. Each method utilises different ways of eliciting data in the landscape. The visual method Object Mapping developed the most through the process of the working with the team.