Territorial storytelling and “deep maps”: visual tools for participation, communication and policy making

In the last few years the authors have been working, with a small group of colleagues, on the devel- opment of projects intended to represent the territories with the device of “territorial storytelling”. After performing research with the “traditional” tools of cultural and economic geography, the idea of deep map emerged, as an open-ended process of collecting several different materials, mixing scientific and non scientific tools, with some artistic contamination and a strong focus on communi- cation (to the communities) and participation (of the communities). The aim of our deep maps is to capture the present of the territories, not yet neglecting the past, but considering it as a constituent part of the accountable present – intentionally in order to talk about the future. We thus need research tools able to capture the immediateness, the inherent action of the present: our tools are the notebook, the audio recorder, the digital video camera. Our deep maps thus include materials such as audio, video, documents, drawings, pictures, materials created right when the research is performed – and as such in need of accessible tools, that could be used by the non researcher, the bystander, the artist. Our work developed with several projects performed in particular in internal areas of the Italian South or in the Alps, working in small communities with the aim of developing geographical and visual storytelling, in order to provide a contribution to the territorial policies and also to give voice to small territories and their peculiar paths of development. Eventually, we ended up also in pro- ducing documentary films that were selected and are being screened in documentary festivals in Italy and abroad. In this contribution, analyzing the scientific and the non academic literature and looking back at our research experience, we attempt a first methodological assessment: are deep maps possible and useful? To what extent the visual aspects, and the documentary in particular, contribute to the research? What is the distinction or the relationships between our academic and our cinema out- puts – if there is any? Performing this assessment at this stage, allows us to consolidate our meth- odology for continuing in the future projects.