A typical map of the city is often illustrated as a horizontal experience of a neighbourhood, implying that all experiences of space are flat. How then, do we map an experience of vertical neighbourhoods like Thorncliffe Park? A residential enclave of high-rise apartments, navigating the lived spaces of Thorncliffe Park is hardly considered horizontal. In collaboration with visual artist Sab Meynert and a cohort of local teens, we ventured into a collaborative map project to conceive of alternative ways of representing vertical lived spaces in the city’s rapidly urbanizing suburbs like Thorncliffe Park. As part of our research, we visited moms in apartments, walked up and down haunted stairwells, passed colonnades of closed doors, and traversed breathtaking green spaces tucked behind towers. The project concluded with a zine, TPK Walking Maps a collection of research from the cohort containing maps of their apartment building, mental maps of time and space in the neighbourhood, stories of spaces, and stories told in the spaces. Each page is a topographic texture of the neighbourhood, based on the teen psycho-geography weaving both inner and outer experiences.

 

In 2017, TPK Walking was presented by Myseum Toronto's Intersection Festival as Vertical Toronto: Thorncliffe Park, a walking tour led by Manhoor Khan, Abeera Sohail, Sofia and Khuld Abdulalim was also performed to the public by the teens, who led, taught, and shared intimate knowledge of their lives, rituals, and relationships in the neigbhorhood.

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TPK Walking Maps  project was possible with the support of the Ontario Arts Council, The Thorncliffe Park Public Library, Sab Meynert, Sofia and Khuld Abdulalim, Sabah Bashari, Asia Syial, and Hasina Madadi, and is part of Zine Machine, Broken Pencil Magazine's Alternative Arts Education intiatve.

 

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