Counter-mapping inspiration

When our Bioregional Learning Network in Dudley was initiated in September 2025, members connected around the concept of counter-mapping, which had been introduced. This collection of inspiration is to support ongoing counter-mapping work. We hope you find it useful, and please do suggest additions.

What is counter-mapping and why we might find it helpful in our approach to bioregioning?

Sometimes also called, or linked, with radical cartography, or speculative cartography, or counter cartography, counter-mapping is a challenge and questioning of cartographic norms. Countermapping is a mapmaking practice often involving a critical re-reading of existing maps to re-imagine and re-create new maps, or an act of mapping back or forward, that offers an alternative spatial lens or ways of thinking about space, that show knowledges, relationships, representations of reality, imaginings and stories in/with place that are missing from existing maps. It often re-humanizes or re-kins the map. It often makes visible power imbalances and their consequences.

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Click on this toggle to read notes about counter-mapping from CoLab Dudley’s Collective Learning Steward, Jo Orchard-Webb

How might we use counter-mapping to tell other stories of place?

Of rivers rivering, of hedgerows growing, of old languages and myths re-storying, of old ways and way markers for travellers old and new to reconnect, of diaspora migration routes and experiences, of deep time/geological time zones with time portals inviting time travel, of seasonal calendars for responsible foraging routes, even speculative mapping of future imaginings in place; of bird and fish migratory routes; of food system webs, of climate data and so on.

What does/ might counter-mapping look like/ include?

It can be multi-medium (any form)
It doesn’t need to be fixed to traditional scale
It doesn’t need to be of one time (it can time travel moving back and forward)- temporal layering
It has intention around illuminating a less visible knowledge /story and voices.
It supports narrative agency as it is often used in a participatory fashion. “the maps are often framed as co‑constructed interfaces rather than static artifacts.”
It can have an intention to bring different stories of place together by weave additional knowledges and data in (for example we could riff on Dudley MBC’s trails and add more in).

Paying attention to the value of the process not just what gets mapped

Insights from this field [critical pedagogy] have drawn our attention to the critical importance of the purpose and process of each counter-mapping, the networks of actors that are forged, and the ways in which subjectivities are reshaped through the process of mapping. The roles played by different actors within this network generate dialogue and its potential to bring forth counter-conducts through the mapping (e.g. the map’s making and performance). In this process, we have noticed that the emergence of emancipatory knowledge is facilitated (or rather, co-created) through an iterative process of dialogue cultivated over time, fostered by direct exchanges between actors operating within a territorial scale that outlines shared practices.

Daniele Tubino de Souza; Karolien van Teijlingen; Rutgerd Boelens; Gabriela Ruales, 2025

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Core qualities in the process of countermapping lifted up by Critical Playground