Hello, and welcome to Mappery!

I’m delighted you are here. This page gives you a sense of what Mappery is all about and gives you some background why I'm here.

I’d really love for you to be part of this brand new community that I am building here. I’ve spoken to a number of people about this in real life and have had an enthusiastic response. This new space is called ‘Mappery: Not just for Navigation.

My writing is free to all subscribers. However, I have Payments turned on. If you feel that you’d like to support my work here because you enjoy it or find value in it, you can still choose to subscribe. I would be grateful if you do because every little helps, and the work I do here is a large part of my life. I use a portion of your subscription to subscribe to other paid subscriptions here on Substack and I am also looking at a local Isle of Wight charity that I can contribute to.

Keep reading for all the juicy deets.

This is me - Debs ⬆️

My hand-made art maps and their related stories (both fiction and real) are my heart connection, the way I want to connect with a community both on and off line. I want to inspire myself and others to tell our stories visually, to create a legacy of visual memoirs for ourselves and our families. To slow down and remember our lives. Oh, and have some fun too.

The stories I tell, the art maps I share and how the maps fit together will depend on decisions that we make as a collective. I also hope that you may also begin to map your own life as a way to support telling your stories and those of your family and ancestors as we “navigate on the trip that Dante called ‘our life way’”1

Two are exploratory and the third is more about the small details of my life. I’d like to invite you to be an integral part of all three.

The Curious Questers Road Trip

I invite you to dive into this fictional, fantasy road trip with me, which will centre around a quest to find a key. to what, we do not know. This is a fun, fictional ride!

The details:

• ALL stories and maps will be free to all subscribers.

• All subscribers have access to the World Building Index.

• Download a blank map of this fictional world without names, features or borders to map our road trip as we go along. You can download the map here.

• Some of those stories may be written by guest writers (if you want to write with me, drop me a line!)

The Visual Memoir / Personal Atlas

I haven’t decided what this journey will be called yet - maybe it will become clearer as we move forward. For now, it is simply Journey Two. This reflects the unknow elements of this journey. I do not know what the atlas will look like, what maps it will contain or how long it will take for us to build it. All I know is that it will be “a thing” and I anticipate it will be a journey of discovery.

The details:

• This journey is more personal to me but is still free to all subscribers.

• Download this free fun zine-based freebie. Full details of how to use it are in the download.

• This journey may involve guest writers and mappers.

Mapambo

Despite all this talk of maps, I live in the real world! The way that I document that living is unique to me. I tell stories. I map my experiences. I capture the moments I connect with. The details I photograph supplement my personal atlas, they provide glimpses into the moments, events and places that I map.

Occasional letters which will include photographs of the small details of my life every day, and other things that are important to me. Just as the mapmakers of old used to add embellishments around the edges of their maps, I like to think of the photos as “adornments” to my atlas. All letters are free.

This section gives a background to these offerings. I’d love it if you would read on.

Why maps and writing?

Art maps are my thing, the specific thing that lights me up!

I need to express myself both visually and through words. That, in simple words is “my why”. The visuals are often infused with or accompanied by words that reflect my experience of the real world or of an invented experience of a fantasy world!

I’ve been making maps and writing about maps in one way or another for the last 6 years. Art maps are my thing, the specific thing that lights me up! Making up stories or writing my life into the maps in another thing.

I believe that maps are for much more than navigating our physical world. Maps are also for navigating our interior emotional and mental landscapes. They can be instrumental in telling our personal stories and a key way to support documenting both our real and imagined stories.

Art maps

Making art maps is centred on the creative practices of daily, mindful art making and writing. Sometimes I make a map that is purely make believe and reflects my love of shape, colour, and lines. It might be abstract, realist or minimalist, or contain lots of words. At other times, I make a map that is part of a growing collection that I’m creating for my own personal atlas, charting my life.

The alchemy of story telling with maps

Regardless of whether the map is real or make believe, every map tells a story. I love the idea that the process of combining visual maps and the narrative could be a process of alchemy - something new is made from the separate components, which transforms how I see and understand myself in the world.

You can support my art, writing and other efforts here in the following simple ways:

• LIKE and COMMENT
  on my letters and Notes

• RESTACK, SHARE or RECOMMEND
  If you have your own Substack publication/space and enjoy what I do, I will always appreciate a restack, a share of a post, or a recommendation of Mappery!

• SUBSCRIBE as a FREE or PAID SUBSCRIBER

• COLLABORATE with me
  I’m open to any kind of collaboration. Just get in touch or fill in this form!

  Subscribe