Really interesting approach. Thanks for sharing how you got there Terence.
I have a print of The Great Bear on my wall and finally gave in to my long held desire to do this exact exercise myself over the past few months in my spare time…
We went about it slightly differently it seems - my categories aren’t all people but also places and things which helps get to more commonly known intersections (eg “Washington” and “Jordan”). I also just did the initial working out of where to start (Kings Cross and other multi-line stations first) and then created an Excel grid and started work on things I could fit based on Google and a LOT of Wikipedia disambiguation pages. It’s also futureproofed for the Elizabeth line, but not Crossrail 2 (yet!)
Thanks for the visualisation tips too, that’s what I now need to sort. I initially have one made up in Photoshop, but I’m working through your SVG links and instructions which are very helpful as the resolution currently isn’t the best.
TfL were in the news this week doing more of these kinds of things… Black History Month has been celebrated with a map now.
https://www.standard.co.uk/video/news/black-history-tube-map-launched-in-collaboration-with-black-cultural-archives-v033825b0
I’m interested to see how something like this could be used as not just art but also education. I think it’s cool to get people thinking laterally about connections, names and history. Maybe TfL would be open to allowing more collaborations and uses of the map in different ways going forward? I’d have no idea where to start with that and it sounds like you’ve come up against a brick wall too.
As you have found there will often be bias - I know mine is still quite Westernised but I’ve tried to find and place inspiring people on there on the global stage. I also have clusters of similar people/places/things or have found something which has a connection to the actual station itself (or if that wasn’t possible then nearby, I have both “Holmes” and “Watson” near to Baker Street for example but neither fitted my categories for the station itself unfortunately).
It’s been a fun challenge and it’s great to see others have tried the same thing and are inspired by the work Simon Patterson gave us.