Aims
Creating Data Publics for Governance explores projects from Canada and the United Kingdom (UK) where citizens interact with data through creative and cultural methods to explore understandings and relationships with place.
As decision-making structures for local, regional and national governments increasingly prioritise data and evidence as resources for governance, a critical challenge facing democracies becomes the creation of public spaces in which these data can be considered and debated to enable equitable and effective governance systems.
We frame this challenge as a question of creating data publics – publics that are not only constituted by self-interest or shared identities but forged through citizens’ creative participatory engagement with data.
Activities
Following a scoping review, 15 projects from Canada and 15 projects from the UK were identified for closer exploration. These projects were selected at the meeting point of creative methods and citizen participation in place-based decision-making. This analysis was structured using Sabina Leonelli’s cycle of knowledge production (from the article ‘what distinguishes data from models?’).
To summarise and synthesis information on the creative methods these projects use in creating data publics, projects have been shared as cases. Each case is an interactive visualisation using the stages and arrows of Leonelli’s knowledge cycle.
[Where to include Leonelli’s diagram?]
Our analysis is shaped by the information available on the projects and how this is narrated and through our understandings and interpretations. This analysis is intended to open a conversation and for suggestions and revisions to follow.