The Key

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The Key

This map is a collaboration between artist Rowan O’Neill and the Year 4 Creative Group from Dwynwen and Madoc at the Model School in Carmarthen.

The School are taking part in the Lead Creative Schools program run by the Arts Council of Wales.  This program aims to promote new ways of working in schools providing opportunities for innovative learning to address particular challenges through providing schools access to creative people, skills and resources.

The challenge of this project was to map links between the school and the town including geography, history and legend.  The brief was quite open but it was hoped to create a digital resource at the end of the project that other people connected with the Model School (old and new) could continue to add to.  The Peoples Collection website presented itself as the ideal tool for creating such a resource.

According to Wikipedia, the fundamental problems of traditional cartography are; to set a map’s agenda and select traits of the object to be mapped such as roads or land masses or political boundaries, to represent the terrain of the mapped object on flat media, eliminate characteristics of the mapped object that are not relevant to the map’s purpose, reduce the complexity of the characteristics that will be mapped and finally to arrange the elements of the map to best convey its message to its audience.  

The working title for our mapping project was ‘Putting Ourselves on the map’.  After a trip to the National Library of Wales to view the Black Book of Carmarthen we discovered a log book for the Old Model School in the attic of the Uchelder Building - our very own Black Book.  

The design of this map takes the form of a series of logs recording our work as we discovered ways to define and represent the world of the school and the worlds within and around it.  In our very first work session the group were introduced to a digitised version of the Mappa Mundi.  Following this the group were asked to draw their worlds as they saw them.  In the final session we made our own Mappa Mundi with the model school at the centre. This is the world we hold in common.

Here is the key to our map:

Our Worlds

Log Book Entry 31st January 2018

Log Book Entry 7th February 2018

Log Book Entry 14th February 2018

Interview with Mrs Evans

Log Book Entry 28th February

A Model Town - collaborative poem

Log Book Entry 7th March 2018

People's Collection Wales Visit

Our Mappa Mundi

The Old School Bell

Thanks to the maps authors Charlie R, Emilia, Viktor, Gervin, Grace, Esther, Lily, Erin, Maia, Shannon, Max, Harvey, Rhys, Logan, Charlie M, Dion and Tom, Mrs Hughes, Mrs Jones and Mrs Turner, Elinor Wyn Reynolds, Catalena Angele and Emily Laurens.

Rowan O’Neill, Angor Lawr, Ebrill 2018