In 2019, the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Team were delighted to receive financial support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to celebrate 60 years of the AONB designation.  We planned a programme of 9 mini-projects to engage people in different ways and although Covid-19 has disrupted the timescale of our celebrations we are keen to initiate one of the remaining project: Love Maps.

Inspired by Common Ground’s approach to parish mapping, the Love Maps project will work with one or two communities within the Dorset AONB area, taking a creative and inclusive approach to engagement. We are looking for an artist or group of artists / creatives to take the lead on this project.

Parish Maps and the creative processes involved are ways of enabling a community to create a collective expression of values, allowing people to assert their ideas; it is about taking the place in their own hands.

The Love Maps project builds on the concept of parish mapping but is much more about the process than a specific piece of creative product. The product could be a unique physical item of individual or collective creation; it could be 2D, 3D or virtual. What we want from this contract is artist-led creative facilitation within a community, leading to a collective expression of what that community loves and values within their local landscape.

This project is considered a pilot for fostering deeper community engagement with their local landscape and outputs will help guide future conservation activity.

• Closing date for applications is  Thursday 18th March 2021, project to be completed by end of November / early December 2021.
• The maximum amount available for this project is £8000, which will cover artist time, material and travel.
• For further information, please see the Love Maps Invitation to Quote below.