History of maps

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here.  Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Check with your group, including leaders and helpers, to see that no-one is allergic or intolerant to any of the paint ingredients you’re getting. You could use regular paint watered down as an alternative.
• Have everyone come to this session in clothes they don’t mind getting paint on.
• Print copies of the ‘Maps from history’ sheets. Set up tables and chairs for each group and put the ‘Maps from history’ sheets on each table, as well as the urban and rural maps, paper and pencils.
• Set up a separate table with paint pots, gloves, soap, brushes and cocktail sticks.

Map discovery

1. Explain that everyone will be looking at historical maps and how they’ve changed through the years to become the maps we have today. Split into groups and have each group sit at a table. They should have some examples of historical maps from the ‘Maps from history’ sheets to look at.
2. Talk through the different features of each historical map. Everyone should look for familiar locations and symbols and discuss what they think they mean.

Create and draw

1. Start making some natural paints that early map-makers may have used. Do this by adding to a pot: a teaspoon of an ingredient, half a teaspoon of flour and a small amount of water at a time, then mixing until this reaches the consistency of paint. Demonstrate this to the groups.
2. Have everyone put on their gloves before handling anything. Remind everyone to only take what ingredients they need, so there’s enough to go around. If you’ve used the ingredients we’ve suggested, here are some of the colours you can make:

• • Turmeric – orange
  • Ground mustard seeds – yellow
  • Beetroot – red
  • Activated charcoal – black
  • Blueberries – purple
  • Blueberry juice and distilled vinegar – blue
  • Spinach – green

3. Everyone could start by making a petroglyph or pictograph from the Stone or Iron Age. They should copy a rural map, perhaps of a park, using the symbols they examined earlier. Those making petroglyphs should carve the symbols into bars of soap with cocktail sticks, then use some paint to colour in the symbol. Those making pictographs can paint with brushes straight onto some scrap paper.

4. When these are finished, set them to one side to dry.
5. Have everyone find an urban spot on the maps they copied that they wish to paint. Explain that they may choose any of the other historical map styles to use to paint that landscape. Allow everyone some time to choose an area and a style they like, then get them started, reminding them that the maps need to represent the area copied and should be useful for someone navigating through that area.
6. When these are finished, set them to one side to dry.
7. When the maps are dry, they should be placed alongside the conventional map that was copied to compare. Look at the differences and discuss them. Ask everyone which kind of map they’d prefer to use to navigate when out on a hike.