WHAT IS MAPPING BROXBOURNE?

Mapping Broxbourne aims to:

> Create a digital interactive map of Broxbourne Boroughs Arts&Cultural Spaces

> Be informed by conversation and physical mapping with local communities

> Be a visual tool for discussion in Arts,Culture and community development

  What we're doing

Creating a visual map that offers a route in to further conversation around what ‘Arts and Culture’ are in our Borough and provides a space to connect the networks and communities that reside here.

Facilitated by artist Rosanna McKenna and working with Bristol-based design studio,
Fiasco Design Co. In conversation & Partnership with spaces & groups such as Lowewood Museum,Peace cottage Hub
Wormley Community centre, Youth Services Broxbourne, Goffs oak community Libary & Spotlight
we will develop an interactive map of the area that will celebrate its community-led arts and cultural scene.

Plotting our community lead activity from groups such as The Society of Carribeans and Africans and Broxbourne Arts Forum,  to Mayhem Theatre and Community Arts through to our Ecological projects like Grow Cheshunt &
Harmony Garden. Bringing in to the conversation the expanse of nature that is provided by the new river, the river lea and the lea valley park.

Why now?

Its an exciting time when conversations about our cultural landscape are bubbling with Broxbourne council due to release a cultural strategy& Sunset Studios in development there's new  prospects for our cultural activity.

Its also evident that our Landscape is again changing rapidly with new builds like : Brookfield Riverside,Brookfield Garden Village & town Plans for Hoddesdon, Waltham Cross, Cheshunt. You can read more from Broxbourne Councils Local Plan
https://www.broxbourne.gov.uk/downloads/file/1813/local-plan-2018-2033

The map can help to document & unravel our already exsisting cultural landscape in a new, visible and exciting way.

and Heighten conversations around Arts&cultural spaces & their importance to Community at a time of big changes.

Looking to the future.

The map is Open Ended and up for community disscussion .
with the possibility of becoming a tool for community conversation and collaboration. 
Provide a visible presence and conversation around arts and cross-community development here.
To support links between local groups, projects and creatives. With the possibility of informing wider practice and discussion around places least engaged, or seen as least engaged, in the arts.

see here for more info :
Mapping Broxbourne Landing Page
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Your Contribution

By supporting this campaign you are helping to make visible our cultural landscape and the vitality of our community and voluntary sector who make a lot of our cultural activities possible.
Across generations, social barriers, different discipline s and community.

You'll be named on the website as a founding member of the digital interactive map & be invited to be involved in discussions around this developing Community network.

For now this looks like being invited to open meetings/events in person/online and when possible on the website, depending on funding we may be able to create a community forum page on the website its self.

As a project the use of the digital map is open to discussion and will be decided by those who contribute to its creation and anyone involved in the physical mapping across community going forward.
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The Story so Far

My name's Rosanna, I grew up in Cheshunt, with a big Fam of 6 kids + John & Maria .
Went to St Marys School, Cheshunt was interested in Drama,Arts,Photography . Studied Fine Art at BA Southampton Solent and MA Belfast School of Art , travelled New Zealand and returned to the borough after learning about permaculture in New Zealand and realising social change can happen at your own front door...

I co-founded a community group, at the end of 2016 Grow Cheshunt, with My friend Bex and Brother Ciaran, after many discussions about the need for more action and better understanding of our impact on the environment.



We got involved in the community & voluntary sector, running Open Mics, Comedy Nights, Swap shops and developing a community Allotment alongside this. As an Artist I have always been interested in the need for community conversation and creative change-making and Grow Cheshunt offered a platform to explore this, with other people who wanted to make things happen and find out more about where we grew up.

Through Grow Cheshunt we met The Wormley and Turnford Big Local Partnership whom I joined in 2017 and who we're at the time in a process of saving Wormley Community Cntre from Re-Development. In 2018 they offered me my first self arranged mini residency, 'Theres Value Here'  where I explored people and places around the Center and what the area meant to them.  This was where I found  project called 'Deptford is changing'  by Anita Strasser and came across the idea of 'Visual/creative Research' outside of what I new & had been taught about the idea of Research in education.

In 2019 Grow Cheshunt ran a 'Young Voices' event where we used Creative consultation & arts to ask young people what they think about the area. I facilitated a Mapping workshop that gave a chance to visualize the place they lived and add ideas, questions and create a shared vision of what might be possible.

From this we started the Young Persons Open Mic Evenings which in March 2020 as the pandemic hit Grow Cheshunt had just received funding to expand we decided to explore a programme online with a group of Young people who had been the driving force of this work. I learnt so much about what 'creative consultations & creative facilitation meant during the period of 2018 - 2021 I carry this in to each project I step in to.


This was the start of an on going interest & passion for mapping...trying to understand how to communicate,make visible & extend invitations for participation in my life,work & with different groups. While also looking at Care for ourselfs and community within this.

The Broxbourne Creative Partnership

Just before the Pandemic hit I ran a physical Mapping workshop with the Creative partnership 2019 - 2020 
This workshop which showed the vast reality of our cultural,community spaces & the experience of the community & voluntary sector of Broxbourne Borough is what inspired the idea around what is now Mapping Broxbourne.



At the time we were coming together to discuss arts & cultural activity, what exists, and possible funding to develop connections between and visibility of arts, culture and heritage in the borough of Broxbourne.
We discovered many barriers to being involved in 'the arts'. For example: access to transport, lack of visible information about what is going on, and the need to improve connections across community.

Unfortunately due to the pandemic and the need for groups to focus on their own communities, the creative Partnership stopped meeting, but I feel there is an Open Door to re-visit some of these conversations.

Having been involved in the creative partnership as both an artist and a volunteer I wanted to think about the networks, connections and conversations that could be had across community , what support I would have loved as a creative in the area and how to build collaboration across arts& culture here, the map offered space to reflect on this.

The Pandemic was a time where I was able to explore these ideas & my practice further with Support from Mentor Katy Hawkins and Visual Facilitator Stephanie Heckman. And in 2021 I received funding to look at the visual identity of Mapping Broxbourne, the project & collate my work with an 'Arts Council Developing Your Creative Practice fund' which helped to create the current landing page you can see here : mappingbroxbourne.com

Fiasco Design Company

I discovered Fiasco Design's alternative take on an interactive map for the Rio Olympics
(See here : rio olympics interactive map ) in late 2020; I'd been looking for a visual of the idea of a digital map which came from the Mapping workshop with the Creative Partnership. This more illustrative & interactive approach that I saw in the Rio map would give our cultural scene...seen, more concrete in its exsistance, more creative, interactive & accessible .
( although I note that not everyone has access to the internet and physical mapping & sharing information on the ground & within in community is as important)

I’ve been working with Fiasco Design and in conversation with people & spaces across Broxbourne n ow since 2021 about the idea of the Map & Project developing and the time is nigh to make things happen and bring this project to community.

(I've just moved back to the borough after becoming a mother&moving with my parents to Wales just an FYI on life)

Re:Cap

From the initial workshop run with the Broxbourne Creative Partnership 2020 which inspired the project,to the conversations during my DYCP Grant(2021) with Zoe Hudson: Steve Whitlam: Patsy Spears: Nicole May: Tony Cox and David Dent which informed the visual identity. To then re-visiting the borough Dec 2022 to confirm involvement from significant individuals and spaces,the community has been involved in planning from the start.

Spanning the 7 towns of the borough Mapping Broxbourne now needs to foster relationships between place and community,turning conversations in to visual outcomes that can in turn be used for action & opportunity across physical&digital space. In its evolution establishing ways to not only reach those interested in arts&culture but those who feel outside of this&document how they see the cultural sector.

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A Little thought on Arts & Culture

Arts & culture is an expressive vibrant and fun way for communities to collaborate to get involved and be invited to participate in bigger conversations. I believe Life and Art co-exist, and conversations around our social, economic and environmental crisis that are noticable locally , nationally and internationally will be present: cost of living, health and wellbeing of community, developments that are happening now and how they will impact positively or negatively on our existing landscape.. There a lot!

But We're thinking about...
How do we support projects & spaces predominantly run by volunteers to connect ,collaborate and share ideas?
How can we address access to information around arts & culture?
How do things co-exsist in a changing landscape?

What are you thinking?!

Join us in conversation & with an open mind over a number of adhock & still not quite decided events in the next month.

Contribute if your can and be part of a developing mapping network across the borough.. which is an open ended book of Creative action , conversation, collaboration,questioning,community building and very likely many other things.

Find out more email: mappingbroxbourne@gmail.com
Find us on Instagram: @mappingbroxbourne
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