Utopian Mapping - Reimagining the City: Streets, Stories and Cartographies of Possiblity

Cities are revealed as the meeting places of stories' (Kearney, 2002) This workshop will explore the possibilities of cities as places of story formation. It has been argued that gentrification and commercialisation alters cities' stories, with human presence acknowledged mainly in accounts of individual, consumer activity in economic impact reports, at the expense of oral culture and personalised group stories. This workshop sets out to explore and reclaim the human story, embracing the creative power of fiction, and the lure of the storyteller's most treasured device: 'what if'. The session will bring together traditional storytelling and dramaturgical approaches to representation. It will explore ways of inspiring young people to reconsider the city as an inexhaustible melting pot of stories, all of which offer opportunities to reclaim common ownership of urban streets, and to embrace their creative ability to produce cartographies of possibility. Participants will explore narrative formation through engagement with three maps depicting a network of streetscapes from alternative eras - past, present and future. The work will be informed by key thinkers in the field of urban story-making, including Richard Kearney and Henri Lefebvre