On Monday the 5th of May, postdoctoral researcher on the Data Stories project Sam Mutter participated in a day of events on Community Action Archiving at the Usher Street Community Centre, Dublin. 

The event was hosted by Tom O’Dea (NCAD) in collaboration with the Liberties Community Development Project and the Community Action Tenants Union (CATU), of which Sam is a member. The day was attended by a mixture of artists, community activists (including those from CATU) and NCAD students on the Masters in Art and Social Action.

In a pragmatic sense, the activity provided feedback to the archiving group on how the intake form and associated processes could be clarified or improved with a view to opening up this process to other members via their local branches. However, it simultaneously prompted discussions around the politics of sensitivity and redaction (especially in the current global political climate), and the importance of cataloguing in this context being a collective endeavour which wherever possible involves the creators, users and/or subjects of the data in question.

Common themes across these sessions included the challenge of creating archives as an accessible space of lively engagement through which communities would feel an attachment to memories and histories, and be inspired to collective action – as opposed to more traditional conceptions of archives as dusty rooms full of carefully indexed boxes. This in turn sparked conversations around the balance to be struck between engagement and preservation, and the question of how archives might be meaningful and useful at a time when community and cultural spaces are frequently fighting against threats of removal in favour of more financially valuable land-uses.   

These discussions will help to shape the CATU archiving group going forward, as well as feeding into the broader findings of the Data Stories project. 

In the build-up to the local elections of 7th June, Augustine O’Donohue, artist-in-residence with the Data Stories project, in collaboration with the Dublin-based historian Conor McCabe, staged an artistic intervention involving the production and distribution of 18 different custom doormat designs. The mats, printed with a selection of statements, slogans and data relating to the housing crisis, were distributed for free to residents of Dublin 8, the community in which the artist is based and an area particularly affected by housing issues such as homelessness, unaffordability and profit-driven regeneration.

The artists set up a stall on Meath Street on 21st May, creating a space for conversation around housing issues using the doormats as cues. Local residents took doormats home to place outside their homes with the aim of sparking thought and discussion with others, including the politicians who would be arriving on their doorsteps in the coming weeks to garner votes.The intervention produced significant media and political attention, being covered by the Dublin Inquirer, the Irish Independent among others.

Several of the doormats referenced the politics of housing data, such as the growing prevalence of ‘hidden homelessness’ not captured by conventional definitions, and the 2022 census statistic indicating the percentage (41%) of people aged 18-34 living with their parents. As Augustine says, the intervention emerged from “a desire to take the findings of the Data Stories project into communities in a way that could make an impact on their lives.” Furthermore, the idea arose from an interest in how the doorstep itself becomes a political space around election time, inspiring its use as a site for intervention.

Working in collaboration with Conor McCabe and Sam Mutter, a postdoctoral researcher on the project, Augustine will be looking to produce follow-up pieces to the artwork, which could include written works, images or leaflets reflecting on the wider context around the doormats and responses to them. News of these pieces will be communicated through this blog.

A text produced alongside the doormats intervention is available to download here. 

More information on Augustine’s work is available from her website. 

On Wednesday the 12th of July, Professor Rob Kitchin (PI) and Dr. Samuel Mutter (Postdoctoral Researcher) from the Data Stories team attended the half-day ‘Data Journeys’ workshop at Dublin City Council’s Wood Quay Venue. The event, hosted by Angela McCourt of DCC’s Data & Analytics Unit, convened a broad range of public sector bodies from across Ireland to share experiences and knowledge garnered from attempts to improve or enhance data infrastructures and practices within their organisations.

The event featured a series of talks from representatives of bodies including several government departments and local authorities, as well as the Dublin Fire Brigade and the Gardai. The presentations made clear both that different organisations were at different stages of their data journey, and that this journey could not be reduced to a pre-determined, one-size-fits-all approach. Depending on their broader strategic aims, each organisation necessarily plotted their own route, making decisions on what kinds of data were important to them.

Prof. Kitchin presented a set of initial findings from the Data Stories project. His presentation drew on cases beyond Ireland to demonstrate how data maturity frameworks could be helpful in conceiving of data work strategically, using agreed-upon criteria for data quality whilst also allowing for bespoke journeys which enfold organisational histories, cultures, and operational priorities. In outlining the work of the project to this point, his talk also emphasised the scale of housing, planning and property data alone, within as well as beyond the State.

The Data Stories project generated significant interest among the attendees, with several expressing their desire to discuss collaboration in future work. More broadly, the appetite and enthusiasm for a permanent network to facilitate regular exchange of expertise and provide ongoing support on data-related matters across the Irish public sector was deeply evident as the day drew to a close.

We would like to thank Angela McCourt and their team at DCC for organising the event and inviting us to participate, as well as supplying the photographs for this post.