Political, sporting, commercial, or entertainment events in a given community often gain significant traction and participation, while arts and culture often fall to the wayside and struggle with participation and recognition. Maps are a unique, creative, and great way to address this problem.
Interactive maps are a great way to create, promote, and circulate Art Trails, and Mapme has quite a few customers using Mapme for Art Trails.
These trails can be part of temporary events, exhibitions, or part of permanent fixtures or installations. Using maps can help spread the arts to wider audiences and communities.
In Practice
Ocean-conservation nonprofit Project 0 has partnered with skincare brand La Mer on a series of over 50 wave sculptures placed throughout the five city boroughs in an effort to raise awareness about the planet’s oceans. This map is very user-friendly and informative. It features clickable map pins with photos, videos, and information about the art and the artist, as well as hyperlinked maps to the installation location.
Miami Design District, Florida
A great way to discover the vibrant and creative art and architecture that characterize Miami’s Design District is through a self-guided walking tour. This map has bright, eye-grabbing colors to highlight three different walking routes (art installations, galleries, and museums). Upon clicking on one of the three routes, visitors can see the locations, names, artists, and images of various works.
Warehouse District Tour, Cleveland
The trendy Warehouse District, sometimes called the Arts District, is the heart of downtown New Orleans, converting brick warehouses into innovative restaurants, sleek coffee shops, eclectic boutiques, informative museums and art galleries, and more. The District takes visitors on a user-friendly tour drawn with a bright red route overlayed on a map of the city, so visitors can see where the tour goes and what the stops are. Additionally, the header has a “Donate to Support” link which takes visitors directly to the Historic Gateway Neighborhood Corporation to support these efforts.
The Stratford community boasts its commitment to the arts by uplifting and highlighting its talented artists and their works. With Mapme, Stratford residents, artists, and arts supporters can virtually experience the amazing and varied visual arts scene. This map features details about each of the works under the “Art Walk” category, and also highlights details about nearby “Top Insta-worthy Spots” for those wanting to find places to document and photograph their visit to Ontario.
Best Practices for Effective Art Trail Maps
Header and visuals
- Have written and visual information to identify your project, featured artists, dates and locations, cost, accessibility, and more
Organization
- The art trail can be a category in a map with other types of information (e.g. city guide)
- The map can be just for the art trail (storytelling style)
Share your map
- Embed it on your website
- Post it on your social media
- Some customers use QR codes at each location on the trail so visitors can learn about each work and its artist. For best practices and guidelines, see How To Create QR Codes for your Interactive Map
- Share it with relevant local artists and arts organizations
- Share community benefits of your art trail with local press, TV, and radio outlets
Drawings
- Drawing a route to guide visitors is very useful, especially if the art trail is designed to be visited in a specific order
How to use Mapme to create an art trail map?
Mapme makes it easy to create interactive maps for art trails. No coding or technical skills are needed.
For each artwork, you can include a description, images, audio, and videos.
You can also easily draw a route to guide visitors through the art trail.
You can use the reports to analyze the interactions on the map. For example, you can find out which artwork generates the most interest.
And of course, you can easily embed the map on your website and share it via social media.