Representing Cromarty: deep mapping as a method for community engagement

Cromarty is a small town in the Scottish Highlands, and is the only rural case study in the Representing Communities project. The Cromarty and District Community Council area has a population of c. 700. The process of deep mapping draws upon historical materials and explorations of everyday life, in a particular locality. This work also involves creative and artistic representations of the locality, which are interrogated as another form of ‘evidence’. We are exploring how these kinds of materials might be used as new forms of evidence in co-produced health and wellbeing policy formation. As part of that process, we have experimented with visual forms of reporting for our community engagement process. For our ‘work in progress’ Exhibition in 2015 we created 10 large banners which document the process visually. These visual ‘reports’ were created from the drawings, collages and maps made by the Cromarty Youth Café, during their co-production sessions, photos of different forms of community engagement and a variety of maps and marine charts about the area. These were displayed outdoors and indoors: having outdoor displays was found to increase project profile and participation significantly. We would like to provide conference attendees with the opportunity to view these banners, from a local project, at the conference. They provide a very rich insight into this work.

This abstract was presented at the Innovative Solutions in Remote Healthcare - 'Rethinking Remote' conference, 23-24 May 2016, Inverness, Scotland.