Map of Hannahstown

Black Mountain overlooks many parts of Belfast. And from many parts of Belfast you can see a dip in the western end of Black Mountain. This ruffled edge is the location of a quarry. Down the slope from there, out of sight, is Hannahstown. I read that the village began in the early 19th century when a landowner called John Hamill gave an acre over for use a cemetery. His wife's name was Hannah. Their own daughter would sadly become one of the first to be buried in the new graveyard. Her name was Hannah too.

The cemetery was soon joined by a school, then a chapel, then a village.

The Hannahstown Heritage and Cultural Society is a newly formed group who, with funding from Belfast City Council, decided to make an historical map of the area. The result is beautiful hand drawn piece of cartography.

Overview

Detail 1

Detail 2

The map has an twisting perspective, wrapping Hannahstown around the map reader. This is just a good a way to represent a landscape as any other. Wherever you look you can see a horizon, just like reality. This map also looks back in time. Members of the society pooled their knowledge and packed the map with local history. It is full of information; folk history, old place-names, snippets of material culture, flora and fauna. Eamonn Mc Croy is the illustrator. He says the map "contains only a subset of the many topic discussed during a lively series of very enjoyable evenings."

Detail 3

Detail 4

The map is displayed in Hannahstown Community Centre and there are plans to do a print run of it. I am also hoping to include A Map of Hannahstown in the Mapping Alternative Ulster exhibition in the Ulster Museum next year. More on that soon.

Blobs in Antrim

I had this map pressed into my hand outside a design fair in London lately. It's a flier for a craft magazine called Hole and Corner. I like the colour scheme, the few dashes of orange set it off well. On the map Britain and Ireland are marked up with images of cultural produce, sports and famous art from various regions.





The top half of Ireland is filled mainly with two GAA players. That makes sense, but what are those mysterious blobs occupying Country Antrim? Painters' pallets? Alien invaders? This is a serious question, any ideas?

The Detail on Schools

The Detail is a news website for Northern Ireland. Its staff do not just write traditional journalism. They also run a kind of story that may well become more common as we entre the era of 'big data'. They make news by analysing and collating statistical information. Recently The Detail has looked at rates of repossession, studied cancer prevalence by postcode and compared emergency service response times across Northern Ireland. Often The Detail displays its findings using online maps. This is the case with the report, "How our school leavers fare - by school and by postcode". Below I have posted the two screenshots that cover Limavady.

On this map every secondary school in Northern Ireland is described by a selection of stats. These include the percentage of students who are entitled to school meals (a rough indicator of economic well-being) and the percentage who go onto further education.





We have come to expect a religious divide in Northern Ireland's education system. Towns often have a Catholic School and a Protestant one. Sure enough, many of Northern Ireland's small-to-medium sized towns have two secondary schools. However, zoom it and a different divide is revealed. Class or relative wealth seems just as important a story. Schools with high rates of free school meals send low numbers of students to university. Use their map to roam town to town and this correlation holds true, regardless of the school's place on the religious spectrum.

Derry's Gardens

Derry/Londonderry is UK city of culture this year. Specially created artist's gardens are open to the public now around the city. Artists Locky Morris, Katie Holten, Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey have planted the gardens in houses, city yards and on rooftops. There are ten in all. One is mapped in this charming illustration.



From UK City of Culture website:

The rationale of the project is to create a city centre 'garden trail’ that changes along with the people and the town they are situated in. This is particularly important in a city centre context which generally emphasises consumerism, the manufactured and which affords little time for reflection, conversation and growth.

Fictional Ulster: In Development

I'm almost done with Version One of Fictional Ulster, a map of places created by writers. Thank you to Patricia Craig who told me about a few locations I might not have discovered otherwise. Patricia, who edited The Ulster Anthology, probably knows more about Ulster literature than anyone else alive. She has read all the bad and forgotten stuff as well, which is useful as fame or literary quality play no part in getting on the Fictional Ulster map.

A preview, from Mid-Ulster

Northern Ireland: 30 Years of Photography

I am delighted that The Map of Connections has been included in Northern Ireland: 30 Years of Photography by Colin Graham. This is a substantial and authoritative publication which, interestingly, looks at both gallery photography and journalistic work from Belfast archives.

There will be a public lecture by publication's author on 7 June from 12noon to 1pm in the MAC, Belfast. Many photographs featured in the book are currently on show there.

The book was published this month.

I like Graham's reading of The Map of Connections. He wonders if the border's connection points might be its "truest existence". That a place might be best seen through its contradictions was something I often considered when developing the map.

See The Map of Connections here. This page also features other maps I have created.

The Model City

Forum for Alternative Belfast is a community interest company that campaigns for a better connected built environment in Belfast. On the 2nd of May an exhibition showcasing their work opens in The Golden Thread Gallery. The show features a three dimensional model of Belfast's centre.

Making the model city.

Four coats of acrylic were required, then a high-viscosity top-coat.

In the model, vacant sites will be highlighted in and proposals made for how these sits could be converted and made to live again. Painting the mini buildings was a time consuming job. Forum for Alternative Belfast asked for volunteers to help them with it. I assisted one day and it was fascinating to see the model in development.

The exhibition will run until June 8th. It will be accompanied by a public talks. Go to The Golden Thread Gallery's website for details.