About

About

About

Knowledge Mappers is a unique, digital mapping consultancy & publishing company, producing ground-breaking knowledge products & services that ‘visually connect’ people with what they need to know so they can do what they need to do. Find out below who we are, what we do, and who we do it for (as well as what they they think about what we’ve done for them).

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Our People

As well as our in-house team, we operate with a virtual team network of associated technical developers and subject experts to create and deliver our visual knowledge solutions. Knowledge is all about people – there’s no point to it if the right person doesn’t have it to hand when they need it, in a form that they can easily digest, assimilate and act upon. All the people we work with are “people” people and understand that implicitly 🙂

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In-House

Angus McDonald (BSc, MSc)

Founder, CEO & Principal Consultant

I have over 25 years experience as a Geographic & Visual Knowledge Consultant within both the local government & private sectors, both employed & self employed, with a proven track record of envisaging, designing, producing & delivering innovative, ground-breaking information products & services.

Since my MSc in Environmental Science in the early 1990’s when I first encountered computerised Geographic Informations Systems (GIS), I have held a passionate belief that working visually with knowledge using mapping in all it’s guises – geographic, information, knowledge, concepts, processes etc. – can help people make the world a better place, through doing whatever it is that they do, quicker, easier and with a lot less stress!

At the same time though I’m also conscious of the fragility of knowledge – often hard won – and the difficulties involved in retaining it in the collective conscience and transferring it it to those that need to know now. That’s why I also have a passion for making the most of the resources we do have and not re-inventing the wheel wherever possible.

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Associate Network

MindManager International Value Added Partner (MIVAP) Network

MindManager Software Consultants & Developers

The MindManager International Value Add Partner Network are a group of professional companies & individual consultants with a passion for MindManager, the world’s best information mapping software and the only one with an application programming interface (API), which makes it possible to develop macros and add-ins that automate processes as well as further extend it’s already formidable & unique functionaity.

Our many decades of combined MindManager knowledge, experience & expertise enables us to offer training, consultancy, support & development solutions that are second to none, to all types of users across the world.

Many MIVAP members are official Authorized Mindjet Partners.

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Andrew Combes

Active / Sustainable School Travel Consultant (STHC)

I started working in the field of sustainable travel with Sustrans back in the mid 1990’s, doing just about everything from survey through to construction. From there I entered local authority life, first with Somerset and then with Dorset County Councils. During my time there I was also seconded to the UK Departments for Education and Transport as the SW Regional School Travel Advisor for the national Travelling To School Initiative.

A common theme throughout has been to take an evidence based approach to the work undertaken. This approach has delivered change, however it has also highlighted some of the inevitable policy conflicts that pull in opposite directions to achieving active and sustainable travel…

Although no longer full time in local authority life my work with the School Travel Health Check continues, as does my consultancy work – I am currently working with Dorset County Council to deliver a Local Sustainable Transport Fund funded ‘Schools Doorstep Leakages’ & social marketing’ project.

That said most of my time recently has gone in to turning an old unloved windmill on the Isles of Scilly in to a camera obscura!

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Our Skills & Tools

At Knowledge Mappers we believe knowledge works better for people – ie. it is more easily discovered, captured, understood, organised, managed, archived, retrieved, shared & acted on – when it’s visually structured. Thus our skillset (and indeed passion) lies in the creation of visually structured knowledge resources – ie. maps – on just about any subject, that help individuals, teams, organisations & communities…

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Make connections and gain business-intelligence insights they didn't have before

Avoid 'information overload' and generally get a lot more done with a lot less stress...

Save time and money and increase return-on-investment

Geographic Information Mapping & Spatial Analysis

Our first passion is the mapping, analysis and sharing of geographic information (GI) – ie. the knowledge about the ‘places & spaces’ that make up our physical world and our interactions with them – and we have over 50 years of collective experience covering all aspects…

From it’s initial sourcing / capture, spatial analysis using GIS (from every day mapping tools like Google Maps and Google Earth, to full blown analysis software like ESRI, MapInfo and QGIS), and publishing & sharing with expert & non-expert stakeholders alike as both online map-enabled data portals and large format paper maps.

 Indeed our School Travel Health Check (STHC) spatial analysis service – which was born out of an initial GI consultancy project to provide high quality, spatial intelligence data to one local authority, it’s school communities and other stakeholders interested in how children travel to their school, from where, and how far they travel to get there – has been combining all of our GI skills in a nationally available, ‘one-stop shop’ service since 2005.

We are also passionate about the development of spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) at all levels to ensure that this key knowledge about their world is accessible to all who need it – be they members of the GI Professional Community or communities defined geographically – and they have the capacity to use it to support them in whatever it is they need to do, once they have it.

Note we are a registered data processor with the UK Information Commissioner (ICO).

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Our School Travel Health Check (STHC) spatial analysis service has been combining all of our GI skills in a nationally available, ‘one-stop shop’ service since 2005….

Knowledge Mapping With MindManager

Our ‘traditional’ mapping skills are complemented by nearly 20 years expertise with Corel (formerly ‘Mindjet’) MindManager, the worlds best information (‘mind’) mapping software. It’s awsome flexibility and productivity-boosting features make it the ‘digital tool of first resort’ for anybody who works with any sort of digital information (which is most of us).

Utilising our unique range of information cartography skills we create comprehensive knowledge maps of universally important geographic and time ‘spaces’ and make them available to download from our map store. The HTML versions can be accessed by anybody using any modern browser, on any device, on or offline, without the need for any plugins, whilst anybody with access to MindManager software can use the MindManager format maps as ‘ready made’ templates to amend, adapt & repurpose (in whole or in part) in their own projects so they do not have to re-invent the knowledge wheel each time.

We also offer a bespoke knowledge mapping service for clients, as well as consultancy so they can benefit from our extenstive expertise. Along with our fellow partners in the MindManager International Value Added Partner (MIVAP) Network we offer a complete MindManager consultancy service to help others to get the most from this most amazing tool.

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We make our knowledge maps available to download in 2 file formats…


MindManager (.mmap) format for full featured viewing, amending and adapting using MindManager software. These can be imported into other ‘mindmapping’ software applications, but with caveats.


HTML5 (.html)
versions of our maps (published using MindManager’s unique HTML export feature) can be viewed by anybody, in any modern web browser software, on any digital device, without the need for any software plugins, as stand-alone files or embedded in web pages, on(or off)-line (once dowloaded).

Find out more below…

We make our knowledge maps available to download in 2 file formats…


MindManager (.mmap) format for full featured viewing, amending and adapting using MindManager software. These can be imported into other ‘mindmapping’ software applications, but with caveats.


HTML5 (.html)
versions of our maps (published using MindManager’s unique HTML export feature) can be viewed by anybody, in any modern web browser software, on any digital device, without the need for any software plugins, as stand-alone files or embedded in web pages, on(or off)-line (once dowloaded).

Find out more below…

MindManager (.mmap) maps are the original maps we create. Thus when opened in MindManager, all the features of the world’s best information mapping software are available for…

  • full feature viewing…
  • editing & amending…
  • adapting & re-purposing…

MindManager is available for both Windows and Mac, with an Enterprise version that can be centrally installed on local area networks for users of 5 or more (eg. integrates with Microsoft SharePoint). There is also a free mobile app for Android.

A fully functioning 30 day free trial copy can be downloaded from the links. At the end of the trial period MindManager remains fully functioning, apart from the ability to save files. Thus it can be used as a free file reader for our knowledge maps in MindManager format.

HTML5 (.html) knowledge maps retain all the content – and most of the interactivity – of the original MindManager map (from which they are exported). For example they can be interactively queried by filtering using index marker tags to hide / show / highlight the coresponding branches.

And, just like any other html file, they can be …

  • viewed by anybody, in any modern internet browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safara etc.), on or offline (once downloaded), on any device…
  • shared by email or file sharing services (eg. DropBox).
  • published online as stand-alone web pages, such that they have their own URL (which can be shared), or even embedded within existing pages (and hosted somewhere else eg. the aforementioned URL).

However HTML maps cannot be edited or ammended, or content copied and used in other maps.

Because MindManager was the first software of it’s type and has been the market leader for over 20 years, many other information software programmes (or online platforms) that have subsequently emerged have the capability of importing map files in MindManager (.mmap) format. A word of caution however…

Our maps fully utilise the large range of unique ‘information cartography’ features available in MindManager…

  • large maps (1000’s of branches)
  • ‘rich (ie. variable) formatting’ of topic text
  • multiple hyperlinks attached to a single branch,
  • embedded data features (spreadsheets, charts & topic properties)
  • configurable sub-branch layout options for every branch within the one map

These features are not supported by other information mapping software programs. Thus even if your program can import a MindManager file, how it copes with each of these features, and what it renders on-screen as a result, will vary from the MindManager version so user beware!

Our Clients

Knowledge is all about people – it does little good if the person that needs it can’t find it, when they need it, in a form that they can easily digest, assimilate and act upon. We therefore take a people-centric approach to designing and delivering our knowledge products and services, and we see all our clients as people first – whether they are acting on their own, as part of a bigger team, or a whole organisation, and in turn delivering services to clients of their own.

Whoever they are, we like to work in a collaborative way with our clients and partners so that we achieve more together. You are experts at what you do. We would like to help you do it quicker, easier and with a lot less stress with what we do!

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Client Testimonials

From the UK Chief Medical Officer to Local Council Officers, Project Managers and Headmasters, our mapping products and services have connected many individuals, teams, organisations & communities with the knowledge they need, to do what they need to do… quicker, easier, and with a lot less stress 🙂

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Organisations

Over the course of our careers our team have worked – as both employees and contractors – for public sector organisations, private sector organisations, and public sector organisations that became private sector organisations! But also over that time the distinction between the public sector and private sector has become much less distinct. Indeed partnerships and collaboration is the name of the game.

This is of course where our mapping skills comes into their own – who’s who, where are they, who knows what, where all we all going, and what are we all doing along the way?

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Communites

Communities are where we choose to live & collaborate with each other for personal & communal benefit. It’s also where the world is changed, and that the knowledge of how to make change, resides.

When we work with Communities it’s all about empowering them with the knowledge resources they need in order to move forward with challenges or opportunities they are facing. This is done by connecting them with each other, with what they do know, and with the wider general and specific knowledge bases so that they can fill in the gaps.

Our skillsets & tools mean that communities don’t need to be defined geographically in order for us to map them, the knowledge they retain, or the existing knowledge resources they can harness and benefit from…

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Featured Client

Andrew Crummy - Community Tapestry Man

There are many ways of visually capturing, sharing – and indeed preserving – community knowledge for future generations. Over the last 10 years or so we have been helping friend & neighbour renowned Scottish community artist Andrew Crummy with his work on the many community tapestries he has designed.

Individual tapestry panels are larege – typically 1 x 1m, 0.5 x 1m or 0.5 x 0.5m – so we are able to print out Andrew’s design templates at full size with our large format printer, which the designs are transferred onto. The design is then traced onto linen panels from the template and then sent out with the hand-coloured colour print to an army of hundreds of volunteer stitchers across the country, who realise it as a tapestry,  usually in small community groups.

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As a designer I can say without hesitation that Knowledge Mappers were important, unsung heroes, when I was designing The Great Tapestry of Scotland, Scottish Diaspora Tapestry and more recent projects. They provided a fantastic custom-made service in printing out large scale drawings and grids, without this key support it would have the made designing these tapestries more difficult. They also had an attention to detail that was very important. I cannot recommend them enough.

Here are some of Andrew’s community tapestry projects we are immensely proud to have played a small part in…

The Battle Of Prestonpans Tapestry (2010)

Launched in Prestonpans in July 2010, the 104 panels in the Prestonpans Tapestry tell the story of the promising start to the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, from the landing of “Bonnie Prince Charlie” in Eriskay to the victorious Battle of Prestonpans.
104m x 0.5m, 104 panels, produced by over 250 stitchers.

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The Great Tapestry Of Scotland (2013)

Launched at The Scottish Parliament in September 2013, the 163 panels of the Great Tapestry Of Scotland depict the complete history of Scotland, from its geological formation millions of years ago to the tennis triumphs of Sir Andy Murray in the present day.
143m x 1m, 163 panels, produced by over 1000 stitchers.

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The Scottish Diaspora Tapestry (2014)

Launched at the 3 Harbours Arts Festival in May 2014, the 307 panels in this Scottish Dispora Tapestry tell how people from Scotland have travelled and settled all around the world, but also how these “Scots Abroad” in turn profoundly influenced thier homeland.
307 panels, 0.5m x 0.5m, produced by over 700 stitchers in 30 countries

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The Tapestry For Renfrewshire (2016)

Begun in February 2016, the Renfrewshire Tapestry is an ongoing project that traces the history of the county of Renfrewshire. As well as the customary panel templates, we were also asked to print this ~1583 map of Renfrewshire by renowned Elizabethan mapmaker Timothy Pont (Pont 33) at both A1, and ‘double A0 taped together’ size, as part of this very unusal community mapping project.

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The Mount Felix Hospital Tapestry (2019)

This beautiful community tapestry tells the story the ANZAC hospital at Mount Felix in Walton on Thames. 27,000 New Zealand wounded soldiers were welcomed into the heart of Walton on Thames and treated at this hospital during WWI and Andrew Crummy’s design depicts some of the most powerful true life stories surrounding the hospital.
44 panels 0.5m x 0.5m

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The Cancer Tapestry (2019)

In 2017 Andrew went through cancer treatment. In conjunction with his ENT surgeon Rod Mountain and his oncologist Dr Ioanna Nixon he decided to o create a tapestry showing the science of the journey when going through Cancer Treatment and the care & compassion which is an important part of the journey. The aim is to get a 1000 people to add to the tapestry.

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