"Informed Imagining" may be the best way to describe trying to draw or recreate historical landscapes. I used the example of the Siege of Derry. So much of the physical aspects of the city, especially those of the latter part of the Seventeenth Century still exist. They have been consciously preserved. They embody and represent an ideology. We have the walls and the cathedral. The walled city is still laid out along the same lines. We still have issues with Catholics below the walls and Protestants within them. But realistically, and in reality (perhaps not in our heads) so much has changed.

In 1689 most people had (in reality) a geographical border of about 30 miles in any one direction. In such a context your allegiances lie in parish, in town, in townland-in the immediate. Today, with globalisation, such borders must exist only in our heads. There are no such physical boundaries and can never be again. The ideological and spiritual borders back in 1689 were not much wider than the physical ones.

But, today, given the amount of information available, we have to make a conscious decision to either accept or reject any ideology. But in 1698 no one could imagine the great shifts in thinking of the Eighteenth Century, those brought about by exploration, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution or even by the Industrial Revolution and socialist ideologies of the Nineteenth Century which transformed not just Derry, but the world and in the 20th century we went out and looked back at our entire planet from space. Trying to really picture the past may require more than just graphics and accurate reproduction it may require a shift in perception.

 By trying to visualise the city as it was we/I may come to a better understanding of it's past. It's strange to think that we here in contemporary Derry/Londonderry can occupy the same spaces as our predecessors, still see some of what they saw and feel some of what they felt. These physical constants may make it easier to empathise, to understand the past and they make comparisons easier but they may also bring a reality to the difference- the difference between then and now. I believe we need to acknowledge and explore that difference to move local mindsets forward.