A Masterclass in Making Maps
Are you captivated by maps?
Do you love to explore Earth through historic and contemporary mapping?
Then join us for a masterclass! Bookings open in January 2026…
Face-to-face specialist training
Outside the UK? We also offer on-demand online training.
Our training philosophy
We believe the best way to learn is to ‘do’. Rather than sit you in a beige classroom with bland neon lights and feed you worksheets and rehashed PowerPoint slide decks, we’ll take you out into the wilderness (or a nearby city).
Our training is informal and delivered with passion. So if we’re teaching you cartography, we might meet at the Royal Geographical Society to explore their archive, then spend the afternoon in a museum workspace. If it’s GIS training, join us on site while we capture a basic dataset before heading to a nearby coffee shop to plot it.
Naturally, everything’s negotiable. If you’re a University and boast decent coworking spaces, we’ll accommodate that too. Trust us and we’ll take your students on an enjoyable learning journey.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s your experience in terms of training?
Our founder, Tom, has delivered training in various aspects of the geospatial workflow for years and years.
As an academic, he led PhD, MSc and undergraduate courses in labs and in the field. As an R&D specialist, he ran regular courses and held technical working groups attended by all the UK electricity distribution networks (DNOs).
More recently, he’s developed and delivered training courses to the CENTA doctoral training programme and The Wildlife Trusts. This is training that we still provide, as For The Love Of Mapping Limited, today.
How much does your training cost?
Our prices are bespoke and vary by discipline, availability and your motivation. What we mean by this is that we’ll happily price up a basic GIS course but you might prefer it if we deliver the course somewhere memorable and include some data capture.
We’ve long forgotten those lectures in cold lecture theatres from years past. We’ll never forget the day we met the ‘king of limbs’ – an ancient old oak – in Savernake Forest, though.
There’s no substitute for being there and doing the thing, and measuring the tree that inspired a Radiohead album meant the lesson was unforgettable.
What do we need to supply?
Bring your own laptop with the requisite software installed (obviously we’ll let you know what you need in advance). We’ll provide datasets.
We tend to favour open source software as it keeps costs down.
An optional donation to the relevant software developers (e.g. the QGIS Foundation) can be paid with your course fees.
Do you offer discounts?
Of course!
When our founder, Tom, was studying for his PhD he was struck by the wild variation in the cost of training.
Let us know who you are and what you do as we routinely offer special rates to researchers, charities and other small businesses.