Story Mapping Praxis to Principles: Learning from the Atlascine Project

This article introduces and discusses story mapping principles inspired by the development of the latest version of Atlascine, an open-source, online platform for tagging, mapping and animating interviews and story collections. Shaped by critical cartographic theories and oral history research practices and ethics, Atlascine combines the analytical, visual and navigational strengths of maps with the immersive, evocative and emotional dimensions of stories. Through the design of this platform and the mapping of over 150 stories, we identified six core principles related to the process and purpose of story mapping that could inform a range of projects: (1) the map never replaces the story and the mapmaker never replaces the storyteller; (2) the integrity and totality of each mapped story are preserved; (3) the mapping process is made transparent; (4) the map offers a spatial synthesis of the stories while conveying their geographic complexity; (5) the map acts as a portal for listening to stories as well as for (6) a creative interpretation of story collections that provides an essential pluralistic reading of places. By embracing these principles, we reimagine the relationships between maps and stories, positioning mapping as a way to take care of stories and to engage with them for what they are rather than what can be extracted from them.