🧑🤝🧑 Social or Network Mapping
Activities
Social Ecosystem Mapping
Early work mapped the social ecosystem: who holds stake in the basin, where they operate, and how trust might grow through repeated contact on their own ground. Mapping follows a “full polycentric” logic—many centres, each assessed with criteria fitted to local conditions, not one template. The basin is treated as a mesh of places—schools, municipalities, farms, NGOs, artists, scientists—each a centre of attention and care with different leverage on the river.
Stocktake and Gap Analysis
Between autumn 2024 and early 2025, two directors held ten conversations with [[Dark Matter Labs]], working through fifteen dimensions of how the Tay might one day host bioregional financing facilities without being pulled into finance-as-usual.The stocktake and gap analysis summary names what followed: most effort still moves on grants; directors absorb much of the labour unpaid; the orchestrated live portfolio stays narrow while a longer shelf of ideas waits on restricted funds and courage. Relationships with power and place are understood in the room more often than in a single shared atlas; bioregion-wide visioning is deliberately cautious because neighbours want motion, not another talking shop. Pilots such as the Ericht point toward MRV and a possible nature-finance aggregation path, yet no Tay-dedicated financial vehicle exists—only the question of what must harden first so a facility could be trustworthy rather than ornamental.
Waterford Bioregional Mapping
Mapping work combines science and lived attachment. Participatory workshops ask residents where they feel emotionally tied to the territory; those insights layer onto geological base maps of river basins and land use. In the Anne Valley, community-led water-quality monitoring adds ground-truth to institutional data. Throughout, the process engages Gaeltacht na nDéise (Irish-speaking Waterford) so language and culture stay visible in how the bioregion is drawn and discussed.