The third pilot of Mapping Amsterdam took place during the workshop day of the Design & The City conference. The workshop took place at the temporarily built and self-sufficient society FabCity campus, which is located at the head of Amsterdam’s Java Island.
The idea behind the workshop called Creating Grassroots Initiative Blueprints by Mapping the City was to create blueprints that should help instigate change in a neighborhood through responding to the right needs in grassroots initiatives. This would be done by using a smartphone app which participants of the workshop could use to map their neighborhood. With the collected data blueprints could be made.
Participants consisted of an interesting international mix of storytellers, officials from the government, a local initiator and designers. At the start of the workshop they where given a keynote about participatory mapping and were given some local knowledge of the neighborhood by one of its residents. Thereafter the participants head out in groups into the neighbourhood of Java Island, each equipped with a smartphone and the Measuring Amsterdam app. With the app they collected data by interviewing residents, taking pictures and writing notes about their surroundings.
Upon returning to the FabCity campus they where met by a lunch. After the lunch the workshop was continued with a co-creation sessions. Each group of participants analyzed the collected data to decide which idea was the most interesting or relevant to improve the neighbourhood. Together with other open data and social media they used this to fill a canvas and create a story.
The result consisted of three completely filled canvases full of data and ideas. Currently we’re working to further develop our method through which participatory mapping is used for citizen empowerment.
