ABSTRACT
Across the United Kingdom, both groups and individuals are engaging with cartography to memorialise the localised cultural impacts of World War One of a hundred years ago. This paper examines the popularity of these mapping-based community centenary projects and considers their characteristics and forms. The ‘citizen cartographers’ leading these projects draw on both digital and analogue forms of mapping, and the results of their work provide an interesting indication of the enduring cultural allure of maps and mapping. Using examples of community centenary projects from around Britain, and in the context of national centenary projects and programmes, the paper offers some critical reflections on the place of cartography in the practice of community commemoration. To this end, through locality-based volunteer research projects in the United Kingdom, new communities of cartographic practice are emerging. From these new maps and mappings, arising from WW1 community engagement, there is scope to re-evaluate recent geographical debates on ‘critical cartography’ and ‘participatory GIS’. In addition, collectively these community mapping projects and practices – termed here ‘commemorative cartographies’ – reveal a rich and significant place-based public engagement with the war and its centenary.
