Courtney Adair Johnson

Hinge Arts Residency 

Fergus Falls, MN

August 2015

 

The Walking Map project engages the citizens of Fergus Falls in creating a more walk able community.

 

What if you had a map readily available for walking? All the great walking paths in Fergus Falls mapped for citizens of Fergus Falls to stroll. Designing a walking population can help promote better mental health and breakdown social and economical barriers.

 

Being able to interacting with one another, learning faces in your neighborhood.  Finding local plants and wildlife along the paths you walk. Noticing trash on the walk, a chance to pick up, educate about recycling reform, and gather resources.

 

Awareness of waste is important in our everyday life and what a better time to take notice. Collecting trash along the way. Picking up refuge builds a time to open up the discussion- is this recyclable, usable as another resource? What happens to the material?  My practice centers around this awareness and seeing the potential in abandoned material. We would collect material to be used in making.

 

Walking through different neighborhoods, with different community groups, encouraging business to take a walking break.  Everyone walking and creating his or her own maps, community members would learn through workshops to draw and record their diagrams.  Becoming a cartographer in a day, tracking walking trails through the city, from Kirkbride, the library, etc.

 

Creating a new history through mapping.  Drawing maps they might of walked in their past. Creating walks for now, or walks in the future. Looking at maps from the city’s past, how did they move around the city? How can we create new movement through the city?

 

The community will participate in the sharing of maps through the documentation of them, printing and binding of books to distribute to others.

 

Using material sourced through local business refuge, printers always have an excess of paper.  Material found along the walk used to build aspects of the books, printing plates and covers. We would create a limited edition of 20 hand bound books and zines to distribute.

 

Workshops with the community would consist of Walking/Mapping Fergus Falls, Print a Map and Bookbinding/Zine making.  Groups would be targeted to participate and facilitate movement in their community.