Re-situating participatory cultural mapping as community-centred work

Abstract

Participatory cultural mapping is rooted in practices of community engagement and collaboration, working to make visible and co-produce knowledge that is of value for community identity formation, reflection, decision-making and development. Meaningful collaboration requires fierce listening, sharing control and sensitive attention to processes and perspectives. In contemporary academe, aspirations to ‘co-create’ knowledge with communities are heightening and becoming more visible, but we also observe resistances to fully embrace the challenges and implications embodied in meaningful community-academe collaboration. These doubts and hesitations raise questions about the broader implications of democratising knowledge through meaningful community-engaged processes. In this context, this chapter will examine community-centred work through the lens of participatory cultural mapping, aiming to highlight characteristics of meaningful citizen participation processes; the need to recognise diversities of expertise, knowledge and experience; and the changing role(s) of academe in collaborative knowledge-generating contexts.