Public Map Newsletter - November 2026
Hello! Welcome to this month’s Public Map newsletter.
First, I’d like to introduce myself as the author of these newsletters. This is Cai, new Communications Coordinator! I started in Llangefni six months ago and have loved getting involved in (and photographing) Public Map’s myriad activities, from city centres, to wetlands, to castles.
Lle Llais 2026 - film
First up, something to watch! I spoke at length in our last newsletter about our annual Lle Llais festival, which was held in September near Chirk Castle. Since then, we’ve published a film by our collaborator Dewi Fôn Evans, showcasing some of what we got up to.
Mapping Community continues
After the success last month of the first Mapping Community session, the second will be on Wednesday the 4th of November, 1-2pm. It’s a free online learning drop-in to give anyone the tools to make and use maps. This time we’ll be covering ‘mapping using creative methods’ so if you’re curious about the insight you can gain from bringing art and maps together, drop in and hear from our experienced community mappers, with plenty of time to ask questions!
You can sign up for a reminder at
publicmap.org/mapping-community
Session: Mapping using creative methods
Wednesday, 4th November, 1pm to 2pm
Mapping a town’s cultural landmarks
We’re aiding Pontypridd’s bid for 2028 UK Town of Culture. One of Public Map’s founding principles is wanting to give voice to people and places that are at risk of being left out of the conversation, so the opportunity to help bring recognition to an area with a deep history and personal connection to some of our Taff Valley team has been wonderful.
The team have been helping out Pontypridd Town Council and Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council to map residents’ and community figures’ views at a series of arranged dinners. We have a map of all of the town’s ten wards on public display, inviting people to contribute to it and get excited about what makes the town special.
The hub for Pontypridd28 is in Pontypridd Indoor Market, open Weds-Sat 10am-4pm until the end of November, where our map is visible, Our mappers are holding activities every Wednesday, so do drop by if you’re in the area!
publicmap.org/events/pontypridd-culture-mapping
Public Map says goodbye to Maya Lee
It is a bittersweet time as we said farewell to one of our original Community Mappers, Maya, who has been with us since July 2024, at first in our Llangefni office mapping Ynys Môn.
“I was really pleased that there was, from my perspective, some sort of community-based development, happening somewhere that I was really familiar with. The fun part of the job was rediscovering and finding so many new places on Anglesey, which was loads and loads of fun.”
In the last year, Maya made the move to our Taff Valley hub and was instrumental in setting our community mapping foothold in South Wales.
“Mapping, now, to me, is the conversations that happen around a map, or placing things spatially in your head, or seeing a place through the eyes of someone else.
‘Mapping’ is a community, I suppose, like, the community of people that I can talk about maps with or get excited about maps with - which just sounds ridiculous - but it happens!”
Her time with us came to a close in the past couple of weeks as she’s moving on to an exciting role at Alma Economics. We wish her the best of luck going forward!
“I'm going into a social researcher position, and I think a big reason why I applied for that job was because of all of the experience and joy I had from the social mapping that I did on Anglesey with the schoolchildren, and that methodology was really inspiring to me.”
Map of the month: Anglesey Through Zines
Maya Lee (Public Map) & Elin Angharad Jones (Coleg Menai)
View the interactive map on the Public Map Platform
“[One of my passion projects was] the zine workshop that I did with Coleg Menai. We managed to have the Art Foundation students do it over two days over the theme of Anglesey. It was just so much fun that the zines they made were so creative and completely random. And then I was able to digitise them, map them. They were just a good format in terms of engaging with that age group. I don't think we'd engaged with 18 to 20 year olds yet at the time, so it just proved that that kind of format was really accessible, and fun in terms of mapping.”
- Maya Lee
You can read Maya’s blog, on the liberating value of zines as a medium and as an accessible engagement tool, here: Mapping through Zines
Things to look out for…
Our Mapper Award Scheme is incoming, a series of online courses that’ll give you the chance to earn Bronze, Silver and Gold certificates in digital mapping!
We’ll be hosting drop-in discussions about the role of universities in communities at the Wrexham Room during Wrecswyl this Saturday.
In Cambridge, the Young Mappers programme will be running in-person teaching sessions for primary-aged mappers every Wednesday over the month of November.
Dr Zhuozhang Li’s In Search of a Cambridge Culture Map will collect locals’ experiences of art and culture in a series of workshops throughout November.
And that’s all we have time for in this month’s edition! As always, keep an eye out on our socials, especially Instagram, for updates on Public Map’s various activities.
See you next time!
Cai Dickinson
Communications Coordinator
Map Cyhoeddus · Public Map
