Personal Cartographies

Year 7 students from Stoke Newington School: Media Arts & Science College mapped their families and friendships with artists Agnes Poitevin-Navarre and Jeremy Wood

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Strips of craft paper with brightly coloured images of people.


Year 7 students worked with artists Jeremy Wood and Agnes Poitevin-Navarre to produce Personal Cartographies, part of Iniva's Mapping Beyond exhibition series at Rivington Place.

The students explored their personal geographies and history through a series of discussions and exercises with the artists. They mapped their everyday activities, located family connections to national boundaries, thought about their tastes, hobbies, passions, their family roots and how the ethnicity of their friends is perceived.

The students then used this information - which forms their personal geographies - to create self-portraits using GPS drawing, collage and pictograms.

Finally they researched and mapped out their family roots and the journey their ancestors made before their parents settled in Stoke Newington. The demographics of their circle of friends were also codified, making up the group piece in the project.

Personal Cartographies is part of Creative Mapping, a three-year learning initiative involving schools and colleges in East London.


Personal Cartographies


The artist in a classroom with a group of students looking at their work Two self portaits by year 7 students. The portraits are drawn in pencil on paper. Year 7 students work on self portraits in classroom Students self-portraits using black and white pictograms on brown kraft paper. The pictograms form self-portraits Artist Jeremy Wood talks to year 7 students in a classroom with students' artwork on the walls Group of students sitting together with artist Jeremy Wood preparing for group portrait Strips of brown kraft paper against a black background with different coloured pictograms along each strip Brown kraft paper with different coloured pictogram people against black background