Our talented Craft Club created the fantastic Great British Craftography Map, and it’s currently up for auction to raise money for Solent Mind, our corporate charity. The crafty individuals recreated the Ordnance Survey National Grid into a 2.2m by 1.2m wall hanging with the 91 tiles showcasing 16 different craft techniques. Each tile represents a notable subject from the area covered – it could be a geographical feature, a well-known landmark, a local food, or even a craft or material associated with the area.
Just for fun, we have a #CraftographyMap quiz to test your knowledge of Britain. We’ve picked ten of the crafty tiles – can you tell us which areas of Britain they represent? Bonus points if you know the corresponding National Grid tile reference too…
1. The contours are mapped out for this lofty British mountain
Blog by Tim Newman, OS OpenData Product Manager
This month sees us celebrate the seventh anniversary of the launch of OS OpenData. This was a big milestone for us as we released 11 of our mapping and analytical datasets under open licensing. Each day, 150 different people download data from our portal taking, on average, two products each. This adds up to over 400,000 orders placed since the launch of OS OpenData in 2010 and an enormous 1.9 million downloads in total.
OS Open Map-Local
Using a wide range of techniques, our talented Craft Club have created a fantastic Great British Craftography Map, and we’re putting it up for auction to raise money for Solent Mind, our corporate charity. The crafty individuals recreated the Ordnance Survey National Grid into a 2.2m by 1.2m wall hanging. And you can now bid for the unique, mappy piece of art in an online charity auction.
OS Craft Club with their creation
We’re at Solent Mind‘s Eastleigh Wellbeing Centre today to officially open their newly-refurbished training room, with our CEO Nigel Clifford and Solent Mind CEO Kevin Gardner on hand to cut the ribbon. A fantastic team of OS volunteers had donned their decorating overalls to transform the once dull room into a clean, energising environment which can now be used by staff, volunteers, and service users.
The OS team working on Solent Mind’s training room
As part of the makeover our team not only decorated the room but helped install new blinds, carpet, furniture, storage and artwork including a creative finger print painting from OS staff. The room wouldn’t have been complete without a map, so one of the final touches came when the team hung an OS Custom Made map canvas centred on the building.
Guest blog by OS-sponsored PhD student Katherine Stansfeld at University of London
Superdiversity is a concept which recognises that cities are becoming ever more diverse, complex and unpredictable. But how can OS respond to the ever-shifting multicultural city?
Through my PhD research, based around Finsbury Park, a neighbourhood in north-east London, I’ve discovered the power and potential of mapping to explore and investigate the meanings of places in diverse contexts. Using interviewing, visual ethnography and participatory mapping, the research explores vernacular geographies; the everyday ways places are talked about, lived and experienced. This allows an investigation of how lives and trajectories overlap in the area, finding what is shared and what is different. The research conceptualizes place as radically open, shifting and multiple and employs mapping as a tool to explore the connections and plurality in the superdiverse city.
We often share the photos taken by our Flying Unit in between their surveying tasks. And you’ll have seen the aerial imagery they take when surveying from the skies. But have you ever wondered what it’s like to do your daily work in the back of a Cessna 404? Roger Nock, one of our Flying Unit, took a photo of his workspace. Take a look.
Roger explained what we can see…
March 24 sees the UK film release of Lost City of Z. It chronicles the South American adventures of British explorer, cartographer and archaeologist Lt Colonel Percy Fawcett. I joined a panel discussion in London last week, along with historian Dan Snow and Lost City of Z author David Grann, discussing how Percy would have explored and mapped a new land. Catch up on the podcast here.
Dan, David and Mark
A member of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), Percy Fawcett first arrived in South American in 1906 to survey and map an area of jungle lying on the Brazil and Bolivian border. The border between the two countries was not fully mapped and it was agreed that an RGS survey and map would be accepted as an impartial representation of the border. Today we would complete this activity using satellite systems and sophisticated surveying technology, which obviously wasn’t available back then. So, how would Percy and his team have gone about making maps?
When we decided to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the trig pillar last year, we had no idea how strongly so many of you felt about the (mostly) concrete pillars dotted around Britain. We’ve had over 1,200 Instagram posts, uncovered dozens of trig baggers, seen Rob Woodall complete his 13-year mission to bag all 6,190 and had hundreds of people, magazines and websites share stories throughout the year.
With 18 April fast-approaching, #TrigPillar80 is drawing to a close, and #TrigPillar81 doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. So, huge thanks to everyone who took part and keep sharing your trig pillar love with us. Here are 7 fantastic things about trig pillars in case you missed all of the celebrations this year:
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