Abstract
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This article discusses how geographic information system (GIS)
technologies were used to enhance ethnographic methodologies
within a cultural research project, Creative Tropical City: Mapping
Darwin’s Creative Industries. It shows how mapping technologies
can broaden the scope of data available via interview practices
and produce innovative ways of communicating research results to
stakeholder communities. A key component of the interview process
was a “mental mapping” exercise whereby interviewees drew
sketches, revealing important sites and linkages between people
and places. A GIS linked responses to real-world locations, collating
and displaying them in meaningful ways. Responses uncovered
Darwin’s unique geography of creative inspiration—a geography
that preferences Darwin’s natural environment over sites of urban
creative milieu.