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Welcome to the website of the International Cartographic AssociationGet to know the new ICA Executive Committee for the term 2023-2027Get to know the ICA Commissions for the term 2023-2027
Welcome to the website of the International Cartographic Association
Get to know the new ICA Executive Committee for the term 2023-2027
Get to know the ICA Commissions for the term 2023-2027

Invitation to the Barbara Petchenik Competition 2025

Dear friends and colleagues,

It’s a great pleasure and honor to announce the Official Call for the Barbara Petchenik Children’s Map Competition 2025.

This year we have a new theme of the competition: Maps in everyday life (as selected by our colleagues from 11 countries).

All documents related to the organization of the next competition can be found here:

This year the most significant change for the member states and/or affiliate members planning to participate in the competition is that we have a new international coordinator starting from 2025: Our colleague Monika Kopecká from the Institute of Geography at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. We would like to reiterate our deepest thanks to Monika for accepting this key task in the running of the competition. Peter van der Krogt (The Netherlands), who has been the international coordinator since 2000, retired in 2022, but nevertheless continued to coordinate the competition in 2023. By means of this letter we would like to thank him again on behalf of the ICA for his very valuable contribution together with his brother René to the success of the competition in the last 24 years.

As became usual in the last years, national coordinators will be invited to participate in an e-mail-based voting process to select the winner works, which is planned for June 2025. By this reason it is very important to send names and e-mails of national coordinators by e-mail for the Chair and Vice-Chair of ICA Commission on Cartography and Children, otherwise we cannot ensure our direct contact for the invitation.

For more detailed information about the competition, please visit the Petchenik section on the ICA website, the website of the Commission on Cartography and Children or their Facebook page.

Feel you free to forward the call to other colleagues and anyone else potentially interested in participating in the competition. If you have any question, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Best regards

Silvia Marinova
Chair, ICA Commission on Cartography and Children

Jose Jesus Reyes Nunez
Vice-Chair, ICA Commission on Cartography and Children

Selection of a theme for the Barbara Petchenik Competitions 2025 & 2027

Every four years, the ICA Commission on Cartography and Children is responsible for the selection of a theme for the next two Barbara Petchenik Competitions. Again, the commission decided to organize a voting process to select a new theme.

First, members and colleagues were asked to propose themes for the competitions. We received 54 themes that were sent by colleagues from 11 countries and an international organization. An online voting slip was created with Google Forms to allow commission members and interested colleagues in general to participate in the voting process from May 6 to May 24, 2024.

In the end, we counted fifty responses in the voting process for the new theme for the competitions in 2025 and 2027. The winner theme with 20 votes is ‘Maps in everyday life’, submitted by the Argentine Centre of Cartography and proposed by David Díaz. Our warmest congratulations on behalf of the ICA to both the centre and David!

We would like to thank all the colleagues who sent their proposals and also all those who sent their votes in the last weeks. The detailed results of the voting process can be seen here:

Our next task is to update the rules for the 2025 competition, which will be discussed at the next commission meeting on 18 June at 4 p.m. as part of the 9ICCGIS2024 conference programme in Nessebar, Bulgaria.

Silvia Marinova & José Jesús Reyes Nuñez
Commission on Cartography and Children

Invitation to the Barbara Petchenik Competition 2023

Dear friends and colleagues,

It’s a great pleasure and honor to announce the Official Call for the Barbara Petchenik Children’s Map Competition 2023.

This year there are no significant changes for the participants in the competition. The theme will be again: A map of my future world (as selected by our colleagues from 17 countries).

All documents related to the organization of the next competition can be found here:

As became usual in the last years, national coordinators will be invited to participate in an e-mail-based voting process to select the winner works in June 2023. By this reason it is very important to send names and e-mails of national coordinators by e-mail for the Chair and Vice-Chair of ICA Commission on Cartography and Children, otherwise we cannot ensure our direct contact for the invitation.

For more detailed information about the competition, please visit the Petchenik section on the ICA website, the website of the Commission on Cartography and Children or their Facebook page.

Best regards

Carla Cristina R. G. de SENA
Chair, ICA Commission on Cartography and Children

Jose Jesus REYES NUNEZ
Vice-Chair, ICA Commission on Cartography and Children

President’s Blog #13f: Awards of the Barbara Petchenik Children’s Map Competition 2021 at the 30th ICC

Dear ICA Colleagues,

An important tradition at every biennial International Cartographic Conferences is the Barbara Petchenik Children’s Map Competition. It was created by the International Cartographic Association in 1993 as a memorial for Barbara Petchenik, a past Vice-President of the ICA and cartographer who had a lifelong interest in maps for children. The aim of the contest is to promote the creative representation of the world in graphic form by children.

Together with the general map exhibition, from 13–17 December 2021 a total of 178 children’s drawings from 32 member countries were displayed in four categories at the Italian Geographic Military Institute in Florence. As usual, the exhibition was open to the public and well visited during all day. A virtual exhibition can still be viewed here.

A well-established international jury of 8 members, organized by José Jesús Reyes Nunez (Hungary), Vice-chair of the ICA Commission on Cartography and Children, selected 12 awards in four age categories categories. In addition, a creativity award and an award for the public vote were selected. All children’s awards were presented by the jury at the Closing Ceremony on 18 December in the beautiful Sala Pegaso in Palazzo Guadagni Strozzi Sacrati.

Winner <6 years

My Favorite Planet by Ivayla Lazarova (5)

1st: My Favorite Planet by Ivayla Lazarova (5)

Winner 6–8 years

Friendly World by Alfonsina Valdez Galli (7)

1st: Friendly World by Alfonsina Valdez Galli (7)

Winner 9–12 years

Stop the Pandemic: We love to travel, we love maps by Matvei Pilko (10)

1st: Stop the Pandemic: We love to travel, we love maps by Matvei Pilko (10)

Winner 13–15 years

Holographic map of my future world by Angela Waiman (15)

1st: Holographic map of my future world by Angela Waiman (15)

Creativity Award

Virtual Reality by Pijus Jokubaitis (15)

Creativity Award: Virtual Reality by Pijus Jokubaitis (15)

Public Award

Friendly World by Alfonsina Valdez Galli (7)

Public Award: Friendly World by Alfonsina Valdez Galli (7)

 
All winning entries can be found here; all submitted entries are collected here.

The ICA warmly congratulates all the winners and organizers for their contributions!

– Thomas Schulz
Secretary General & Treasurer ICA

New book on the Barbara Petchenik Competition

The Spanish Ministry of Transports, Mobility and the Urban Agenda, through the National Geographic Institute of Spain and the Spanish Centre for Geographic Information, has published the book “The World drawn by children. Barbara Petchenik International Competitions 2017 & 2019 / El mundo dibujado por los niños. Concursos Internacionales Barbara Petchenik 2017 y 2019”. It has been released on the occasion of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on the 11th of February 2021 and aiming to pay tribute to all women and girls dedicated to or interested in Geography and Cartography.

Furthermore, the organiser of these competitions, the International Cartographic Association (ICA), wished to dedicate this publication to the National Geographic Institute of Spain as a tribute to the 150th anniversary of its foundation back in 1870. Its bilingual (English/Spanish) digital version is available from today in the publication section of the Institute’s website. The printed version will be released soon.

The book has been produced by the National Geographic Institute of Spain and it has been published by the Spanish Centre for Geographic Information. It has been created thanks to the valuable contribution of the ICA Commission on Cartography & Children and the remarkable cooperation of the Spanish Society for Cartography, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, which represents Spain at the ICA. However, above all, it could only come into fruition thanks to the wonderful drawings made by children competing in the 2017 and 2019 editions. It also features the pictures regards Barbara Petchenik’s biography accomplished by illustrator Santiago N. Fernández, on loan from the National Geographic Institute of Argentina.

Barbara Petchenik (1939-1992), American cartographer, is an extraordinary example in the task of bringing together science and values, i.e. she was the first woman to serve as Vice-President of the ICA, she was involved in several projects with an exceptional scientific output in the field of cartography, and she worked hard to make maps, her great passion, part of regular education from childhood.



Illustrated details about the life of Barbara Petchenik

There could be no better occasion than today, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, to present the values that guide the international competition that is embodied in this book, in which the main characters are both the World drawn by children and the love for maps.

The Archive for the Barbara Petchenik Children Map Competitions is kept at Carleton University Library (Canada), and can be viewed at https://childrensmaps.library.carleton.ca/. The aims of this international competition are to promote creative representation of the world as seen by schoolchildren, to strengthen geographic and cartographic knowledge and to make participants aware of the world in which they live, favouring understanding and preservation.

The publication of the book also aims to promote the 2021 edition of this international competition, whose theme this time is “A map of my future world”. All Spanish children will be able to participate in this new competition. The Spanish Society for Cartography, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, ICA’s representative in Spain, will receive the drawings and will select the six best national works, which will represent Spain in the international edition. The final decision will take place from 14 to 18 December 2021 in Florence (Italy), simultaneously with the celebration of the 30th International Cartography Conference.

Invitation to the Barbara Petchenik Competition 2021

Dear friends and colleagues,

It’s a great pleasure and honor to announce the Official Call for the Barbara Petchenik Children’s Map Competition 2021.

This year there are no significant changes for the participants in the competition. The only one change is the new theme of the competition: A map of my future world (as selected by our colleagues from 17 countries).

All documents related to the organization of the next competition can be found here:

Please note: In June 2021, national coordinators will be invited to participate in an e-mail-based voting process to select the winning entries. Due to this, it is very important to send the names and e-mail addresses of the national coordinators to the Chair and Vice-Chair of the ICA Commission on Cartography and Children in the next months – otherwise we cannot ensure a direct contact for submitting the invitation.

For more detailed information about the competition, please visit the Petchenik section on the ICA website, the website of the Commission on Cartography and Children or their Facebook page.

Best regards

Carla Cristina R. G. de SENA
Chair, ICA Commission on Cartography and Children

Jose Jesus REYES NUNEZ
Vice-Chair, ICA Commission on Cartography and Children

Selection of a theme for the Barbara Petchenik Competitions 2021 & 2023

Every four years, the ICA Commission on Cartography and Children is responsible for the selection of a theme for the next two Barbara Petchenik Competitions. In 2016, the decision was practically automatic: we opted for supporting the International Map Year using the motto “We love maps” in the competitions organized in 2017 and 2019.

This year the commission decided to organize a voting process to select a new theme. First, members and colleagues were asked to propose themes for the competitions. In almost three weeks, 69 proposals arrived from 17 countries. An online voting slip was created with Google Forms and all the commission members, colleagues from other ICA commissions and interested people in general participated in the voting process from May 15 to June 15, 2020. The voting process was announced not only by e-mail for all the ICA commissions, but also on the Facebook profile of the commission to ensure a wider participation. In four weeks, 132 colleagues gave their votes to max. five themes. The theme that finished in the first place was “A map of my future world” with 41 votes. This is one of the themes submitted by Liqiu Meng, current ICA Vice-president, from the Technical University of Munich, Germany. Consequently, “The map of my future world” will be the theme for the next two competitions in 2021 and 2023.

The second place was occupied by “Mapping for Hope” (submitted by Alexander Kent, UK) with 29 votes and the third place by “The changing world” and “With a map I can…!” (sent by Giedré Beconyté, from Lithuania and the Argentine Center of Cartography respectively) with 26 votes.

The next step will be to officially open the Barbara Petchenik Competition 2021, sending the Call for the competition and other documents next September.

The Commission on Cartography and Children would like to express our deepest thanks to all the colleagues who submitted themes and to all who voted in the last four weeks.

José Jesús Reyes Nuñez
Commission on Cartography and Children, Vice-Chair

The voting process to select a theme for the Barbara Pechetnik Competitions 2021 & 2023 started

The ICA Commission on Cartography and Children invites all of you to participate in the voting process to select a theme for the Barbara Petchenik Competitions in 2021 and 2023. Colleagues and institutions of 17 countries proposed sixty-nine (69) themes during the last weeks. An online voting slip was created using Google Forms, which you can access on the following address:

https://forms.gle/wAWBCXPrbgRfLXov5

The submitted themes are listed in the same order in which they were sent for us. Please, give your vote to max. 5 themes and vote only once. The deadline for sending your votes is June 15, 2020. After finishing the voting process we will make public the selected theme with the results of the vote.

Feel you free to contact us on the following e-mail address if you have any question or doubt: jesusreyes@caesar.elte.hu

Thank you so much for your contribution!

News about the Barbara Petchenik Competition

Music video with maps submitted to previous competitions

Some days ago a Spanish ethnomusicologist, pedagogue and composer, Polo Vallejo (Pedagogy Professor in the Superior School of Music Reina Sofía, Madrid) asked for permission to use some of the map drawings made by children for the Barbara Petchenik competition in a short music video. His idea was to accompany maps made by children with a children xylophone piece of Carl Orff (German composer). Permission was given and the video is now available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsetAhhMSNE

The video is used as a greeting card directed to music associations all over the world.

The ICA Commission on Cartography and Children would like to thank Polo Vallejo for this lovely pre-Easter gift!

Selecting a new theme for the next competitions

Next September the International Cartographic Association (ICA), represented by the Commission on Cartography and Children plans to announce the Barbara Petchenik Competition 2021. In 2016 we decided to support the International Map Year using “We love maps” as theme for the competitions in 2017 and 2019. Now it is time to select a new theme for the competitions to be held in 2021 and 2023. We asked by e-mail all the members and supporters of ICA Commissions, all the representatives of ICA member nations, all the representatives and members of sister organizations and all colleagues in general to propose themes for the next two competitions. The organizers of the competition are open to any theme that can be represented by children on their maps. As help, here we list some of the themes selected for previous competitions: “Save the Earth”, “Many nations, one world”, “Living in a globalized world” and “My place in today’s world”.

We would ask colleagues to send their proposals to the jesusreyes@caesar.elte.hu e-mail address at latest on May 15. After the deadline, the commission is going to organize a voting process on the web, asking colleagues to vote their preferred themes and according to the number of votes, we select only one theme for the Barbara Petchenik Competitions in 2021 and 2023.

If you wish to have more detailed information about the Barbara Petchenik Competition, please visit the sites: https://icaci.org/petchenik/, https://childrensmaps.library.carleton.ca/ or http://lazarus.elte.hu/ccc/2019icc/bpcrules2019.pdf

 

José Jesús Reyes Nunez
Commission on Cartography and Children, Vice-Chair

Winners of the Barbara Petchenik Competition 2019

The Barbara Petchenik Competition is a biennial map drawing competition for children. The competition is first organized on a national level. The national winners can then compete in the international round, which takes place during the International Cartographic Conferences. This year at ICC2019, 188 drawings from 33 countries were exhibited. An international jury selected 12 winners in 4 categories. There was also a public vote, a creativity award and a special mention. Please find the wonderful results below.

Winners <6 years

The Queen of the World by Bianca Belović (5)

1st: The Queen of the World by Bianca Belović (5)

A Boat Symbolizing Peace by Ye Shangke (5)

2nd: A Boat Symbolizing Peace by Ye Shangke (5)

Map is the Most Beautiful Flower in the World by Tara D. J. Suprapto (5)

3rd: Map is the Most Beautiful Flower in the World by Tara Dibbaratana Jayamanggala Suprapto (5)

 

Winners 6–8 years

Between the Clouds by Liepa Jokubaitytė (7)

1st: Between the Clouds by Liepa Jokubaitytė (7)

Treasure Map of My Dog by Micah Allen Setianto Moore (8)

2nd: Treasure Map of My Dog by Micah Allen Setianto Moore (8)

My Imagination by Luca Kunos (7)

3rd: My Imagination by Luca Kunos (7)

 

Winners 9–12 years

Dreaming of the Blue Self of the World by Kim Min-Chan (12)

1st: Dreaming of the Blue Self of the World by Kim Min-Chan (12)

A Turtle's Tear: Our Plastic Oceans by Barnaby Blampied (9)

2nd: A Turtle’s Tear: Our Plastic Oceans by Barnaby Blampied (9)

World of Colour Lines by Hande Körbalta (9)

3rd: World of Colour Lines by Hande Körbalta (9)

 

Winners 13–15 years

Creating Worlds by Rada Skumova (15)

1st: Creating Worlds by Rada Skumova (15)

We Love Maps by Agata Filipiak (14)

2nd: We Love Maps by Agata Filipiak (14)

Hemispherical Understanding by Katarína Šáleková (15)

3rd: Hemispherical Understanding by Katarína Šáleková (15)

 

Creativity Award

It Is All in Our Hands by Ugnė Rimkutė (15)

Creativity Award: It Is All in Our Hands by Ugnė Rimkutė (15)

 

Special Mention

The Map Shows Me the Way by Robert Hopjan (11)

Special Mention: The Map Shows Me the Way by Robert Hopjan (11)

 

Winner of the public vote

Good Morning World by Noemí Sánchez (14)

Public vote: Good Morning World by Noemí Sánchez (14)

Jury

Members of the Jury

Members of the Jury

The jury members were

  • Pilar Sánchez-Ortiz Rodríguez, Spain – Chair
  • Ana María Garra, Argentina
  • Temenoujka Bandrova, Bulgaria
  • Simon Catling, Great Britain
  • Koji Ohnishi, Japan
  • Dariusz Dukaczewski, Poland
  • Necla Ulugtekin, Turkey
  • Naeema Al Hosani, United Arab Emirates
  • Carla Sena, Brazil and Jesus Reyes, Hungary – Substitute Members
  • Peter van der Krogt, The Netherlands – International Coordinator

 

Congratulations to all winners! Also a huge thank you to all participating children, their parents, teachers and national organizers.

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