Monday, April 25, 2016

Benefits of using maps in story telling shown in SSIR article


As this 1994 Chicago SunTimes article illustrates, I've been using maps to tell stories intended to draw resources to high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago for a long time.

Today I read an article on the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) web site that showed how the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF) has been using maps.

In the article CHCF's map-making process was described, saying "If gathering the data was the first step, making it useful was the second."

A benefit of using maps for story telling was described this way:

Maribeth Shannon, the CHCF program director who led the project, said: “The truth is that philanthropy is strategic and opportunistic. We are never quite certain a proposed intervention will make a difference, and we often wait years to see an impact. What catalyzed action here was our ability to visually tell a compelling story and get it into the hands of people motivated to do something about it.”

I use maps and visualizations often on this blog and show uses of maps on the MappingforJustice blog.  In this wiki page I describe strategic uses of maps that I've been trying to develop since 1994. I've never had consistent funds to do this, and still don't.  

But every time I share an article like this, I'm hoping to connect with others who will help develop the mapping capacities as I describe them, so they can be applied in Chicago and shared in other cities.


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