Cultural Mapping
More and more municipalities across Ontario and across Canada understand that creativity, culture and quality of place are major drivers of local economies. To harness these assets, a growing number are turning to cultural mapping as an essential planning and economic development tool.
Cultural mapping has been a priority for the Province of Ontario for several years. In 2009, the Ontario Ministry of Culture launched the Creative Community Prosperity Fund, a $9 million program to support municipalities undertake cultural mapping and municipal cultural planning.
Cultural mapping is simply a systematic tool to identify and record local cultural assets. There are two kinds of cultural mapping:
- Asset Mapping – identifying and recording tangible cultural resources often making use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and,
- Community Identity Mapping – exploring ‘intangible cultural resources’ – the unique stories and traditions that define a community’s identity and sense of place.
The initial focus of the South Georgian Bay Cultural Mapping project is on cultural asset mapping but the project will lay the foundation for community identity mapping work to follow.
Listen to Dr. Greg Baeker speak about Cultural Mapping in the videos below.