Making and Doing: the Data Walkshop

• In Event: Making & Doing Exhibition

Abstract

This is a participatory session demonstrating a 'data walkshop' process for democratizing knowledge and opening conversations about data. In a walkshop, a group of citizens assembles for a brief conversation before heading out to walk and talk in the city. In an approach influenced by the Situationists and by Baudelaire, walkers step out to try and identify evidence of data in space, and brainstorm ways of seeing and (possibly) resisting. We walk and talk together, observing and documenting city spaces that are:

- data rich
- data calm
- data resistant
- where data is valued
- where value is contested
- where data and citizenships collide

The walks invite participants to photograph, document, map and describe these elements. After 45 minutes of walking, participants return to narrate their group’s journey to others and to present a creative assessment and intervention based on their discussion. We photograph and map data walks and create contributions that add to the growing repository of material describing the data walk, and to an open-source ‘pattern language’ for data walks. This session demonstrates how data walkshops can be used to build new epistemologies and ontologies for data.

Author

• Alison Powell