School
for
Poetic
Computation
Maps are not neutral. This class pairs Indigenous cartographic traditions with hands-on GIS practice to rethink mapping as relational, ethical, and accountable. Through global case studies, including burial grounds and erased landscapes in the tropics, students of all levels will build critically grounded spatial projects using GIS.
Images courtesy of teachers.
Both sections will meet for a special joint session on July 16 at 1pm ET with a guest speaker. Section 1 will not meet for class 6–9pm on 7/15, and Section 2 will not meet for class 6–9pm on 7/16.
This is a class made for BIPOC participants who will be prioritized in the application review process.
Maps can extract, erase, and govern—but also remember and restore. This class brings Indigenous cartographic knowledge into dialogue with GIS tools.
Through case studies of sacred sites and overwritten landscapes, students will learn spatial techniques while interrogating how mapping encodes power. GIS becomes both technical skill and poetic computation.
We will work hands-on in GIS, developing skills in layering, georeferencing, and spatial analysis. Alongside technical instruction, we will engage Indigenous methodologies to affirm data sovereignty and relational geographies.
Students will produce a final mapping project that integrates spatial analysis with culturally specific memory and land-based knowledge.
3–5 hours/week outside class on readings + mapping exercises
No prior GIS or coding experience is required!
Participants should:
Computer capable of running QGIS with a reliable internet connection
This class may be for you if you:
This class may NOT be for you if you:
Yvonne Mpwo is a Congolese-American curator based in New York whose work explores reclamation, indigeneity, and sovereignty through exhibitions that bridge digital and material worlds. She is the founder of bana’pwo, a nonprofit curatorial residency facilitating cross-cultural exchange between artists, researchers, and architects engaging with the cultural landscapes of the Congo, as well as its publishing arm, lóbí press. Working between New York and Congo, she develops projects that foreground spatial storytelling, counter-archives, and diasporic memory through technology and material practice. Yvonne holds a Master of Science from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP), where she studied Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture, focusing on diasporic visuality, technological mediation, and curatorial refusal.
Jade Rhodes is a spatial designer, landscape architect, and urban ecologist born and raised in Detroit, MI, whose practice centers on mapping relationships between land, memory, and collective survival. Co-creator of the University of Hawaiʻi’s Indigenous Data Hub within the Office of Indigenous Knowledge and Innovations, her work foregrounds ancestral technology practices from Pasifika and African Diasporic knowledge systems.
Rooted in an ethos of people, plants, and place, Jade approaches cartography as a form of storytelling and restoration, recentering biocultural resilience and reconnecting communities to land through traditional ecological knowledge. Her interdisciplinary background spans Urban Forestry with the Hawaiʻi State Department of Land and Natural Resources, Community Resilience planning with the National Park Service, and graduate research in Agroecology and data visualization.
She holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and a double baccalaureate from Hawaiʻi Pacific University in Pacific Island Studies and International Sustainability, Policy & Anthropology. Her mapping practice weaves together landscape architecture, community ecology, and food systems to address food security, climate adaptation, and equity through place-based, indigenous ways of knowing.
Applications open until Applications closed on April 27, 2026.
You can expect to hear back from us about the status of your application on May 11, 2026. Please email us at admissions@sfpc.study with any questions you have.
For 10 classes, it costs $1200 + processing fees, for a one-time payment. We also offer payment plans. Participants can schedule monthly payments of the same amount. First and last payments must be made before the start and end of class. *Processing fees apply for each payment.
SFPC processes all payments via Withfriends and Stripe. Please email admissions@sfpc.study if these payment options don't work for you.
For more information about what we look for in applicants, scholarships, and other frequently asked questions, please visit our applicant FAQ.
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