Andrew Whincup

Learning & Public Programming Officer

Royal Marines Museum & HMS Victory

Southsea, Portsmouth PO4 9PX

Please note: my email address has changed. It is now [log in to unmask] emails sent to my @royalmarinesmuseum.co.uk address may not reach me.

MuseumBill the Snake

Maybe the thing to do is to reveal the big dirty secret of all maps: that they leave things out, and that someone has to decide what goes on the map and what doesn’t. And also maps are always out of date.

I wonder if you might introduce these ideas by getting your Y8s to make their own maps of their community, showing maybe five or ten things that matter most to them, and then comparing their maps with say the OS, or Bing Maps or whatever. You could also perhaps ask them to make another map, which shows five things that someone else, maybe a parent or a big (or little) sibling would find most significant.

This is, I think, quite a subversive idea because here in the UK we’re used to the idea that we have some of the best civilian mapping the world, and that our national maps provided by the Ordnance Survey are trustworthy.

So they are, but of course they are edited. So they show places of worship, police stations, railway stations, post offices and pubs but not most supermarkets, chemists’ shops, cinemas or playgrounds. Its always interesting to ask why the map shows what is shows, and what this selection tells us about the map-makers.

Hope this helps

Cheers

Richard.