MAPMAKING

The earliest memories I have of my dad are of me and my wee brother Steven poring over an atlas with him, searching for - and memorising - capital cities and tall mountains, river courses and volcanoes. We’ll cover geography teasers for you in a pub quiz.

I’ve loved maps ever since. And not just conventional atlases but topographic, geological and gravity maps, historical farming surveys and contemporary maritime charts.

Gravity map in my kitchen, gift from my sister & my dad

Maps are like stories of a place. And an infinite number of possible stories exist. It all depends on who tells the story and makes the map …

Earlier last month, I worked alongside my friend and neighbour, Sarah McFadyen, on a marvellous mapping project with our local school - Tynewater Primary in Pathhead. Sarah is leading a local arts and storytelling project as part of the People’s Parish.  This has involved film and animation workshops with Pathhead Youth Project (I’m the current Chair of PYP) and creative writing with older members of our community. But I could see also how the project met a need at the school to hit curricular targets around maps and evolving local land use. This is exactly the kind of stuff that gets me more excited than most, and which forms the backbone of my theatre show Wind Resistance and my song Salter’s Road (the story of which is explained in this video).

Sarah and I worked over a week with two classes of 9 and 10 year olds, supporting them to craft their own maps, through their own eyes and local experience of being kids. And the results are - I hope you’ll agree - as delightful as the process of making was too. Truly, I am a primary school teacher in a parallel life (and a cartographer in another)!

For the map geeks amongst you, the National Map Library of Scotland has an incredible free online resource which enables you to look at two centuries worth of geo-referenced historic maps overlaid upon contemporary satellite images. The old maps are ‘seamed’ together with the satellite images and aligned with real world locations. It’s magic, a wee bit like entering a time portal.  The Tynewater Primary kids thought so too. Trust me, you can lose days to this stuff …

THE HIDDEN PLACE

Back in February, I was invited into the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh (after hours - quite eerie) to discuss ‘The Hidden Place’, a fascinating screenprint by the Scottish poet Thomas A Clark. 

Section of Hidden Place 

It’s a map of Scotland, with all the familiar anchors of place stripped away - no roads or rivers, no towns or topographic detail. Instead, Clark renders into poetic, evocative English, the names of places that are otherwise rooted in older languages - Gaelic, Norse, Brythonic.  It’s part map, part poem, part crossword puzzle. And it reveals a great deal about the place names and our connection to landscape. There are names to orientate ourselves in space - little pool in the woods - names that describe what grows or lives there - flax field or rock of the otter - and names that are traces of cultural memory - loch of the outcry and slope of watching.

Here I am bubbling over with enthusiasm about it all, and about how maps have influenced some of my songs -

KNOW WHERE TO FIND ME

Meantime, here’s where I’ll be very soon, on tour with my pal Dave Milligan. We’ve been posting some songs over on Instagram too if you want to say hello there. 

Or come and hear us in person if you can.

MAP - MEDICAL AID FOR PALESTINIANS

Over the past six months I’ve supported a number of fundraisers for MAP - including a pin-drop evening at St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh and two private house concerts in the city, which were won in an auction organised by Secure Scotland.

I’d like to offer two more private fundraiser house gigs over the summer in the Edinburgh, Lothian or Borders area (within an hour drive of Pathhead). Funds raised will be shared between MAP and UNICEF, which supports aid work in other conflict zones too, including Ukraine. The gigs will be made available by means of a sealed auction. The highest two bidders will win an hour long show with me, on an afternoon or early evening that suits us both. You’ll be free to sell tickets privately to, or invite donations from, family, pals and neighbours. Or you can fund it directly from your own pocket if you have the means. 

Please contact my colleague Mark for more information.

Thanks as ever for your support and curiosity!

Happy exploring -

Karine

Do join me on Instagram if you fancy photos of, and stories about, lighthouses, boats, plants, and stones, as well as the odd song.

LIVE

JUN 18 MILTON KEYNES STABLES WITH DAVE MILLIGAN

JUN 19 MANCHESTER STOLLER HALL WITH DAVE MILLIGAN

JUN 20 SUNDERLAND FIRE STATION WITH DAVE MILLIGAN

JUN 21 CLONTER  SOLD OUT

JUN 22 KENDAL BREWERY ARTS WITH DAVE MILLIGAN

JUL 13 STONEHAVEN FESTIVAL INFO

JUL 14 STONEHAVEN FESTIVAL BIG SING WORKSHOP INFO

AUG 04 SIDMOUTH FOLK FESTIVAL  INFO

NOV 01 LONDON  SOLD OUT

NOV 03 LONDON  SOLD OUT

NOV 23 WADSWORTH  SOLD OUT

NOV 24 HEBDEN BRIDGE CHOIR IN A DAY WORKSHOP INFO