Maptia is a beautiful way to tell stories about places. It is a new platform designed for thoughtful, inspiring stories that make us want to get out there and explore the world, and each story has its own unique map.
Most stories have a “somewhere,” and that somewhere in each of our stories is important. Places are like people and we have wonderfully complex relationships with them. They give us the context for our lives, and often evoke strong feelings or memories. Sometimes it is the external beauty of the setting or land itself, at others it is our inner emotions that color how we experience a place.
With this in mind, each story added to Maptia is set in a particular location, and each post within it has an even more specific location still. This enables you to create a simple, beautiful map of the place or places that grace the stage on which your life is played out. Places are at the heart of storytelling in Maptia. Every story has a “somewhere.”
Each place is made up of many stories.
No place has a single story. The interplay of our lives with the landscapes and cityscapes around us is entirely unique. No one can see through your eyes, or experience the world as you do. We each have our own lens on the places we move through. Places are made of a thousand stories, and it is only through gathering our experiences together that the fluid, ever-changing story of a place may be brought to life.
That is why each story you tell on Maptia becomes part of a meta story for the place where it is set. Whether it is a continent, a country, a small village, or a mountain top, stories from that place are tagged and organized together. We will be making this part of Maptia public as soon as we can. For now, we are working to improve it with the feedback of our founding storytellers.
You are part of a global, collaborative story that encompasses all places and all people.
Though Maptia is designed for individuals to share their stories, through the very act of telling a story on Maptia you are also contributing to something much bigger than yourself.
We believe that if people from every country, every culture, and every background came together to share the stories of their lives and their travels, then the world would be a more understanding and empathetic place. We also believe that these stories will inspire people to get out there, to explore the places around them, to appreciate and care for the world, and to make the most of their short time on this planet.
Maptia’s Vision: A Truly Global Story
We believe in a story that celebrates all life on this planet and explores our complex relationships with the stage on which our lives are set. One that acknowledges the beauty and ruthless energy, the sorrows and the joys, the devastation, the greed, the healing, the love, the memories, and the wild left in us and on our planet. One that means we do not have a single story for a people, a country, or a place, but have thousands of diverse and remarkable stories, stories in which we can recognize our differences and our similarities, so that we can celebrate them. Stories in which we come to gain an understanding of the interdependence of all life.
We believe in a story, told by people from every corner of the globe, to share with the generations to come. A shared library of human experience. A story that will continue to grow with each coming day and each new experience added. A story that has the power to effect change, as we learn about realities and lives on the other side of the world, and as we gain empathy and feel wonder for that which is so far from our own experience. A story that is powerfully relevant to each of us on an individual level, that enables us to express our intensely personal relationships with the places that matter the most.
Most of all, we believe in a story that belongs to all of us. A story of universal truths, of the life that we as humanity, for the briefest but brightest of sparks, play out here on our one tiny, miraculous planet.
Sign up to Maptia on our homepage to start telling stories about the places in your life. You can even create your very own typographical version of our “I want to see the world” travel manifesto.
This is an extract from Maptia’s full illustrated launch post, which can be found over on Medium. This project is part of GOOD’s series Push for Good—our guide to crowdsourcing creative progress.
