Children’s Cognitive Story Mapping – A Transdisciplinary South Africa/Canada Collaboration

This innovative project, initiated in 2022, represents a unique collaboration between the Circle of All Nations , Carleton University’s Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre (Canada), the National Association of Child Care Workers, and Durban University of Technology (South Africa). It integrates diverse fields including arts and humanities, social services, and cartography to advance child and youth care practices and therapeutic art creation through participatory mapping.

At its core, this approach centers on Children’s Cognitive Story Maps — a new concept introduced in the work — where children actively initiate and co-create maps that visualize their social and environmental realities, concerns, and needs. These story maps go beyond traditional cartography by combining narrative, creative visualization, and spatial representation.

Engaging social service workers, specifically child and youth care workers, alongside children fosters a collaborative research and practice environment. The children’s mapped stories have informed the prioritization of critical issues, enhancing program development, case management, and policymaking in child protection and community services.

Complementing these grassroots efforts, researchers use provincial and national digital maps to analyze broader spatial patterns and target focused interventions, creating a dynamic bridge between local lived experiences and systemic responses.

The paper explores various theoretical frameworks — including Indigenous perspectives — to support this integrative methodology, highlighting its potential to innovate knowledge creation and enrich transdisciplinary research across geographies and sectors.

A summary of recent work in this area is shared and you can access the full article here or contact NACCW directly for the article: Children’s cognitive story mapping: a complex South Africa/Canada transdisciplinary collaboration: International Journal of Cartography: Vol 0, No 0 - Get Access