Author Archives: Rupert Allan

Pioneering Community Open Mapping in the UK

Food Deserts and COVID disaster-mapping with Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOTOSM), NHS Wales and Missing Maps/MSF.

A pioneer collaboration between Merthyr Tydfil communities, HOTOSM/Missing Maps and the National Health Service. Community-led data to map determinants of disease vulnerability. Reconnecting the NHS with its communities in the birth-place of the NHS (and of the Labour Party).

Community-Mapping Wider determinants of Wellbeing, Community Assets and Disaster Resilience

We adapted Motorcycle Mapping methods previously used with Medecins Sans Frontieres, Red CrossUNHCR, UNDP, IOM, UNICEF, Uganda Ministry of Health, CDC, Sierra Leone Ebola Outbreak and West Africa Motorcycle Mapping.

OpenSource Ocean Navigation

United Statelessness and Counter-Mapping

Doctoral Research – decolonial navigation in the recycling culture of sea-farers: an exploration of cultural geographies and environmental ontologies in ocean punk-migrant citizenship

Associated Publication: Chapter 29: The Routledge Handbook of Geospatial Technologies and Society

This project embarks from the observation that ‘maps are never value-free images’ (Harley in Cosgrove and Daniels, 1988) and that when we map there are preconditions embodied within the process. Critical writers from David Harvey(1973) to Edward Said(1979, and 2000) clearly make the case that all traditional mapping is not only conditional but also colonial, and a technology of spatial and personal governance.

This study is fundamentally interested in the relation of language to technology and the approximations of legend intrinsic to it. Using collective mapping as a model, it is compelled by a critical discussion of humanitarian interventions which use digitally-enabled mapping apparatus to collaborate with – and in – the field. Humanitarian OpenStreetMap is one methodology of digital humanitarianism which is heralded as ‘democratic and emancipatory’, despite criticism of some, whose ‘effect on public participation is more limited’(Givoni; 2016, 15). Initially, this PhD seeks to question whether collective digital mapping dissipates or further enables an imperialist mode, exploring specific mitigations for the Missing Maps project not only because of its reliance on hermaneutics, even affect at both ends of the technological interaction, but because the ‘shapeshifting’ toolkit used is dictated by field-specific demands (lo-tech and hi-tech). Cultural Geographers studying ‘geosophy’ (Wright; 1947) have long considered maps as socially constructed and ‘embedded in specific social contexts of production [and use]’ (Glasze and Perkins; 2015, 144). However, the passing of authorship and method into the public domain creates this phenomenon in the plural. It resets the psycho-geographic parameters, and evokes new suggestions about the speed and power of how reciprocal understandings of space work.

The PhD aims to apply this ontology of collective mapping and its determinants to a contested space – the sea. The sea is used because it is fluid; a socially constructed space, whose changeable landscape features are supplemented by technological, mythological and legal descriptors. It is also a common space whose conception, navigation, and innovation can be assessed from multiple cultural perspectives. By investigating this act of visualisation in a culturally abstracted setting, it will be possible to analyse close readings of the ways people ‘produce’ passage and negotiate cultural imaginaries or ‘legends’ within the spaces they project.

The research considers how people ‘(re)produce certain geographies and thus social realities’ (Glasze and Perkins, 2015; 143). Literary criticism suggests an instructional influence of common literary tropes or narratives, such as heroic quest, adventure, discovery, utopia, wilderness, the sublime on lived experience (Frye; 1958, Olderman; 1972, Dundes; 1965). Examples on the sea include personal accounts of navigations influenced by those who Conrad calls ‘knights-errant of the sea’ (1896, 3), accounts whose factual and technical approximation are an acknowledged theme of the ‘unreliable maritime text’.

The claim of the thesis is that the ideologies and cultural ‘truths’ projected onto the synthetic reality known as a map can be identified as properties of comparative cultural discourses, with traceable origins in literary text, behaviour and form. It will seek to establish the extent and influence of such tropes on design solutions in crisis settings. By comparing examples from differing cultural traditions it will explore the potential of cultural mythology to augment technological innovation. The work will consult approaches to mapping/populating the sea from contrasting economic, political and social viewpoints. The intention is to expose common systems of signification implicit in technical innovation through the specific technique of making maps. It will seek self-conscious examples of ‘materialising ideas’ of Utopia within technological change, and gain insight from cultural approaches acknowledged to identify with technological reform..

The humanitarian field is an environment in which representation, negotiation of terms, and practice of codes can be as critical as it is on the sea. By demonstrating the process of meaning-making through this abstracted mapping process, the case study aims to explore the dependence of scientific exactitude upon cultural form, and the impact of creative collaboration on humanitarian crisis technology.

Mapping Land Voices – the National Library Sound Archive

Mapio Lleisiau’r Tir / Mapping Land Voices – August 2021

Stories of the forest sound archives: https://www.peoplescollection.wales/collections/1102166 

Who knew that there were crofts hidden in the hills of my next-door village in Wales? I didn’t until very recently, when we started listening to the British Library/National Library of Wales sound archives collection.

Dai Morgan, the Horse-Boy

I mean sure, Dai Morgan used to lean on the garden fence between our houses and tell me stories about running away with the mountain ponies when he was a young horse-boy. So near-by and yet, in another village. Dai used to point over towards the north side of the Ystwyth Valley and, conspiratorially, quietly say, ‘they’re different, those people. North Wales, you see. They think differently’. Less than a mile away. 

Dai also told me a story once, about when he had been a Gwas (households had several of these ‘farm servants’) as a lad. He was a horse-boy, and was fascinated with the personalities and breeds of the mountain ponies, which, he said, were four types, which never interbred. He was convinced of this, saying that the original Cardiganshire ponies were russet, yellow and grey, all with white flashes on head and hoof. One day, he was in a far field of the farm in Bont, when the wild horses came down to the fenceline. Dai managed to coax one close and jump on. It bolted and he clung to its bare back, as the whole group of them ran back into the mountains. On and on they ran throught the night, until they came to a small upland stand of trees by a deserted stream and suddenly stopped.

‘It was their home’, Dai explained. ‘I was able to jump off, but it took me hours to walk back, through the night, and I just arrived in time to dodge trouble and do the milking at 5am.’

The sound of ‘Aelwydd’
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I can see it now in these crofts. They had a local perspective. And even though hill-people were mobile – many even lived away for a few years and worked in London – that was most certainly a foreign migration, reminding me of the London Kurds or Portuguese. 

When they were back on their lands, it was exotic, too, for Nant Stallwen to marry into ‘Llew Goch’ (meaning: the family running the pub in Bont). It was 10 miles away, if that. Such households were known as communities in their own right, and would turn up to events as an geographical entity – Nantrwch (stream of the sow), Maesglas (blue field).

Sketch of a Daydream
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

We’re listening to these interviews whilst we sit and draw. Mountain voices. Some coughing, laughing, straying from the question. It’s a very wild but intimate feeling as the rain speckles your face and you imagine similar tactile experiences in this space 60 years ago. 

Interpretation of Tom Morgan’s description of life in the Crofftau (Rupert Allan – YouTube)

When Peggy Maesglas from (Soar y Mynydd) was diagnosed with Hiraeth as a boarding school pupil in Tregaron, her family left the farm-hands running the farm ‘household’ and moved down to town to give her the support she needed. These were close communities, and Peggy also remembers that Nant Stalwen farm would have two or three thousand sheep shearing, and over 100 horses would be gathered, as all the shearers from the hill farms around – men and boys – would muck-in. 

When chapel was on, and the preacher visiting for the weekend, again there were horses. Hundreds of them, grazing the near bog. As well as a chapel which was taken to Bala on the back of a lorry,Tom Bronant tells of breaking the ponies in record time by doing on the deep bog, where they would tire much quicker than back in the lowlands. 

Tom’s recollections of Caio Evans leading the Free Wales Army on horseback manouevres up on the Devils Staircase and around Llyn Brianne are coupled with tales of all the ‘bois’ grabbing a lorry in the middle of the night in Tregaron, and coming up to sing outside Nant Llwyd, to see off a bride-to be. They turned up some time after midnight, and even the dogs were scared by the noise! The lights at the farm went on, the doors opened, and they were welcomed in to party forester-style into the small hours.

And ‘Nant Llwyd’, as a household, were legendary, with family and gwasau (farm-hands) comprising a formidable force when it came to horsemanship and community events. But it was Peggy Maesglas who features as the ‘man vs horse’ competition champion, and known for the finest horsemanship in the area, she could get back from Tregaron to Soar in less than an hour, if she hurried. 

The reputation of Caio, and his character, are easily forgotten these days, As is the very comprehensive threat which the FWA implied for Westminster. Caio’s leadership and physical presence comes across in different accounts, though, and he was clearly universally admired – almost like (and contemporaneous with) Che Guevara. Organised and agile, his well-put-together group seems revered as a not inconsiderable guerilla force. And the hills, unroaded but easily-navigated by skilled horsemanship, must have presented an important dilemma for the antiquated machinery of a threadbare post-war english task force.

One of the independent flags of Wales, at Castell y Bere (CC BY 4.0)

These landscapes are boggy and hard to navigate. But roads – even tracks – were less important when you consider that everybody had a horse which could graze the mountain grass. Free fast transport for everybody. And Peggy Maesglas says that the roads that the forestry brought in destroyed the communities. The sound archive research continues next month, with Stories of the Forest from Soar y Mynydd and Nant Doethie.

Stori’r Goedwig – Stories of the Forest: National Library of Wales

Blog – Unlocking our Sound Archive

The Unlocking our Sound Archive project took us today to Nant Flur and Bryneithinog. The light was nickel-silver, and the lichen on the massive rocks of the old dwellings was stunning. And we sat on a couple of them looking at a short rainbow on the hilltop above the forest and listened to the recording.

See full screen

‘Ty’n ‘nabod Dai Crofftau?’ (do you know Dai the crofter?). Tom Bryneithinog is hard to pin down as an old man, if you want him to talk about the forestry. He’ll tell you about hiding the sapling trees between your legs to get more money from the forestry commission, and how one farmer went to complain in Tregaron and came back paid-off with a better price, and happy to leave the hill with his family.

Dai Morgan used to tell me stories about running away with the mountain ponies when he was a young horse-boy. So near-by and yet, in another village. Dai used to point over towards the north side of the Ystwyth Valley and, conspiratorially, quietly say, ‘they’re different, those people’. North Wales, you see. They think differently. I can see it now in these crofts. They had a local perspective. And even though they were mobile – many lived away for a few years and worked in London – that was most certainly a foreign migration, reminding me of the London Kurds or Portuguese, and when they were back on their lands, it was exotic to for Nant Stallwen to marry into Llew Goch (family running the pub in Bont). 10 miles away, if that.

Another fascinating and evocative weekend was spent listening to the myths of the mountain folk of Ffair Rhos on Coflein – this is opening up a whole trail of links and research! Corpse candles and highwaymen. I never knew there were 6 fairs at Ffair Rhos through the years. Peggy Maesglas from Soar y Mynydd, over 100 horses, she had Hiraeth, boarding for school in Tregaron, so her family came.

And now, as we walk around the ancient croft ruins (yes, there were crofters in Wales, not five mile from where I live), we see trees planted – birch and beech, by the looks, at least, which are again changing the landscape and how people interat with it. ‘We carried the body of one massive man into the cemetary on our shoulders’, he recalls, ‘he was huge’. Everything is meted out in practical terms with Tom Bryneithinog. Values and prices litter his accounts of working life. ‘Ronnie John from Bont has bought the best land’ in the re-allotment after the forestry changed everything. To used to go up for the shearing to Nant Stalwen. 100 shearers, 5000 sheep (although the farmers never told us excatly how many. Someone with the flu in Nant Stallwen died of the flu because he drank cold water in the night. I was the only person to go out in the snow with the horseman postie. The brother of Dai Croftau cut his hand shearing and died from poisoning. (the doctor didn’t get there in time – Dad used to help him get there over the hill. He’d catch a horse and go up). The chapel-goers would die more than the chapel-goers. They were tricking the big king. The ones who went to chapel were hypoctrites. You shouldn’t go to chapel if you don’t live that way during the week.

Map of the Walk:

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The landscape is boggy and hard to navigate. But roads – even tracks – were less important when you consider that everybody had a horse which could graze the mountain grass. Free fast transport for everybody. And Peggy Maesglas says that the roads that the forestry brought in destroyed the communities.

The baptists sold the chapel, and the buyers came with a lorry and took it Bala!

It was a badger, it was just the Beast of Bont. But there is a big cat that lives here. Down at Capel Dewi. With a hole in it’s throat. They do say that that big cat has been round here. Only once though. They saw it down in …. They travel so fast (although not as fast as a dog). With a fox, you’ll get it with one shot. And hares. I was a big shooter. The dog-hunters are the ones to blame, pulling creatures to bits. Even farmers feel for the fox. They should ban it.