(Source: RGS-IBG)
Between the 28th and 30th of August 2024 Samuel Mutter, postdoctoral researcher on the Data Stories team, attended the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG) annual international conference in London, UK. The conference theme was ‘mapping’.
Data Stories PI Rob Kitchin was also virtually present at the event as a keynote speaker. Rob gave a live streamed presentation from the International Geographic Congress (IGC) conference in Dublin on ‘Digital twins, deep maps and the nature of mapping’, which discussed recent work exploring emerging developments in 3D mapping with our Creative Technologist Oliver Dawkins.
(Rob Kitchin gives his keynote. Source: Maynooth University)
Sam’s own presentation was co-authored with one of the Data Stories artists-in-residence, Augustine O’Donoghue. Entitled ‘Public Luxury: Building a data-informed board game for tenant organising’, their presentation was included in the session organised by Anil Sindhwani (Durham University & Queen Mary UoL) titled ‘Redefining the Housing (Activism) Question’. Their presentation focused largely on a discussion of Augustine’s recent intervention ‘Doormats in Anticipation of Doorknocking Politicians’ (the topic of a previous post on this blog) and her new concept for a housing activism board game to be co-created with members of the Community Action Tenant’s Union (CATU) in Dublin.
(Project artist Augustine O’Donoghue. Source: author)
The presentation sought to situate these artistic interventions within the wider Data Stories project, highlighting the benefits of deploying artistic ways of doing and thinking and the ways this had shaped research processes – including engagement with citizen groups – and outputs. It also reflected on some of the challenges of organising co-creative processes in the context of the Irish housing crisis, manifesting not only as a shortage of available, affordable and suitable housing, but also a shortage of available, affordable and suitable public and community spaces in which citizens, artists and activists can do or make things together.
The presentation provided an interesting point of comparison with other papers in the session. These included research on the practice of ‘rent bidding’ in the UK private rental market by Noterman & Barry-Born and studies of the blurring of public/private space in experiences of homeless populations and the community groups working with them by Burgum & Pojuner.
Overall, the conference enabled Data Stories to share different elements of the project’s work with academic audiences working in related fields.