A small Welsh island is building a digital map that layers social, environmental, economic and cultural data to help local authorities and residents see exactly where inequalities and climate vulnerabilities overlap. The project tackles a practical gap: the 2015 Well-being of Future Generations Act requires Welsh public bodies to consider long-term social, environmental and cultural impacts in every decision, but no standard tool exists to visualise that holistic picture. The Isle of Anglesey—rural, ageing, and underinvested—serves as the pilot site. The map will be co-created with children, young people and families, incorporating Welsh-language storytelling traditions through local bards. If successful, the Community Open Map Platform could give councils across the UK a replicable method for turning the “triple bottom line” of sustainability into a usable, real-time decision-making tool. It would allow planners to see, for example, whether a new housing development improves child wellbeing or reduces carbon, rather than trading one against the other. The project is applied and place-based, not fundamental science—its immediate value is operational, not theoretical.
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Climate change is a social justice issue. It cannot be addressed without revealing and tackling the inequalities within society and where they are happening. Only when we know what is happening in detail, and where, can we make strategic, holistic decisions to benefit people and the planet in the long term. This is why the focus of this pragmatic project is on building a Community Open Map Platform (COMP) to help Local Authorities and their communities picture what is happening in a place as a basis for informed decision making and local action on climate change. The Isle of Anglesey/Ynys Môn in North Wales - the size of Greater London but with an ageing population of 70K - has been chosen as the pilot COMP because it is rural, disconnected and deprived of investment, and also because Anglesey County Council has high ambitions to reinvent itself as a centre of sustainable innovation. The need to include people in decision making about their future is at the heart of the Future Generations Wales (2015) Act (FGA), a ground breaking piece of legislation that is currently being emulated in a range of 'wellbeing economy governments' across the globe. The COMP has developed in response to Welsh Government's need to operationalise the FGA as well as the Isle of Anglesey County Council's need to align its activities and performance with the FGA. Anglesey's priority 'wellbeing objectives' are children and young people, zero net carbon and poverty, hence the focus of this short project on the experiences of children, young people and their families. The COMP will help Anglesey achieve and evidence its progress towards these priorities as part of the green transition through the development of a holistic value map that encompasses layers that demonstrate social, environmental and economic value, the 'triple bottom line of sustainability' and culture, a key pillar of the FGA, one that will be explored through the integration of arts and humanities practitioners (bards) into the mapping process. The project will tap into Anglesey's strong Welsh language storytelling tradition to support the the development of positive narratives that are a legacy for future generations. This will be achieved through 6 work packages (WP). WP1 Developing a Community Open Map Platform: we will use commercial digital design know how to create a bilingual, accessible and well designed data repository (website) that brings together the data layers constructed in WP2. WP2 Mapping the Evidence Landscape: constructing data layers with children, young people and their families: a)Social maps to show what contributes to quality of life in the area; b)Cultural maps made with the assistance of creative practitioners (bards); c)Environmental maps building on existing data, monitoring and observation; d)Census and administrative data maps. WP3 Future Generations Map: the data layers developed in WP2 will be spliced thematically, re-ordered and weighted, using digital technologies, to deliver a methodology for making an accessible digital Future Generations Map. WP4 Community Engagement: a) Inclusion - we will undertake experiments to explore how to make sure that the COMP website and the mapping exercises are as accessible as possible for a wide diversity of people; b) Face to face engagement - we will experiment with ways to make engagement fun & thought provoking; c) Digital engagement - we will explore ways to make our website & social media engaging as accessible as possible. WP5 Capturing impact: qualitative & quantitative methods will be used to gather and map the impact of the project. WP6 Developing the participatory digital mapping design ecosystem: we will promote awareness of the importance of participatory digital mapping while building capacity in this area across Wales and the UK more widely.
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