Authors: Carla Maria Kayanan and Joan Somers Donnelly

In April and May, Joan Somers Donnelly and Carla Maria Kayanan conducted two workshops under the umbrella theme Housing Data: Evidence and Policy in Planning and Housing. The theme of the workshop emerged from a set of interviews conducted with key stakeholders to discuss the past roll out of the Housing Need and Demand Assessment (HNDA) and to consider the future of this National Policy Objective. To better inform our understanding of the logics underpinning the HNDA—and housing policy more broadly—Joan and Carla decided to create a space where housing policy stakeholders could collectively think through the role of evidence and evidence-based tools. The workshops were split into two themes: 1) Where are we now? 2) Where do we want to be? Participants predominantly came from government, planning and policy, but individuals representing the civic and business sectors were also in attendance.

First Workshop

In the first workshop, participants engaged in several visual mapping exercises. Taking an example of a substantial piece of policy work they were currently working on or had recently finished, they worked individually to create maps of the different knowledge, information and evidence needed to do that piece of work. This included labelling index cards to indicate their sources and who or what helps them interpret and connect things. They then created a second map illustrating the relationships between the key knowledge/information/evidence points and relevant stakeholders identified on the first map, using a series of objects to convey the various connections, disconnections and gaps (see top image).

In the third exercise, participants placed their index cards from the first map onto a large map on the ground, in accordance with the stage in the process where they used that knowledge/information/evidence. The map was fashioned in a form of concentric squares identifying the following stages: 1) key to understanding situation, 2) helps identify policy approaches, 3) helps form policy/drive decision making, 4) helps refine policy/numbers, 5) supports policy decision. They then connected the second maps they created as satellites to the third map. These acted to zoom in on some of the details of the dynamics at play in the use of evidence in policy making. Observations about the visual characteristics and structural elements of the maps served as a starting point for a group discussion at the end of the workshop.

In the days after the workshop, participants were invited to a short online interview to discuss the logics behind their maps. These discussions were highly informative. Of particular interest were the descriptions of the objects used to demonstrate relationships. Among many other things there was a snail shell to demonstrate movement at a ‘snail’s pace’, a hand massager to demonstrate who does the coaxing and who receives the massage, and a carabiner to demonstrate the way that data gets ‘locked’ within certain people and institutions. It was particularly interesting to notice what was not appearing on the maps. Often, this was experiential and sectoral knowledge, as well as local knowledge and insights, that are used to interpret the evidence. These elements were acknowledged in the room during the workshop discussion, but when people were discussing the structure of how they work with different kinds of evidence, this information was not incorporated as part of the analysis, remaining unexamined and taken for granted as part of the process. This suggests a lack of acknowledgement of the positionality of different agencies and that positionality’s influence on the interpretation of data, and the lack of structural ways to integrate qualitative data and other localised forms of knowledge.

Second Workshop

The second workshop built on reflections gleaned from the first workshop and ensuing post-workshop discussions. Whereas in the first workshop participants spent time mapping out their own working processes, the second workshop focused on higher level reflection on how the different stakeholders see and use evidence in their work, and the dynamics of the environments that shape those data practices, with more time working and exchanging in pairs and in small groups. The first exercise included responding to reflective questions about their relationship to their work and attitudes towards data and evidence through quick drawings that were later discussed in pairs. The second exercise entailed contributing phrases and drawings to circular diagrams to indicate which things should be feeding into each other that are not currently (e.g. what should feed into the creation of data sets, what should feed into the interpretation of evidence), and the work needed to bridge those gaps.   

In the final exercise participants worked in small groups to discuss a quote highlighting an issue raised in the first workshop or the post-workshop interviews. In small groups, participants were asked to create a fictional physical landscape with characteristics that represented the environment that the issue or dynamic emerged or existed in. The three quotes under analysis were:  

1) ‘The data government are using is sometimes thrown at the public or communities as a justification for making decisions’ 

2) ‘Has it changed anything on the ground though?’ We are changing some of the methodologies, but has the way people are thinking about the problems changed?    

3) ‘We’re not necessarily looking at the softer information, insights about what the trends in the data are about. We’re not feeding those insights into things in a structural way’ 

Participants then presented the story of these fictional landscapes, including physically illustrating a shift that could occur in that landscape.

‘’There happens to be 32 pieces of confetti under here…’’ 

Reflections from the workshop are ongoing. For the purpose of this blog, we categorise them here along three themes: methods, planning and policy thinking and engaging artistic methodologies.

Data practices   

As demonstrated from the overlapping number of cards placed in the centre circle in the group mapping exercise in the first workshop, there was a consensus that a lack of data is not the problem, but rather that there is an overwhelming amount of data. The identified ‘gap’ is the ability to parse, clean, analyse and apply the data. Therefore, the data is ‘out there’ but, to use the words of the participants, it gets crowded, locked (in a person, a place or an organisation) or left behind through continuous advancement in policy making.   

According to the participants, data’s use depends on relationships, communications and people. Different people use their frames of expertise to understand the data and to place assumptions on the data as part of an evidence-base. These ‘political manipulations’ can alter policy in such a way that the evidence-base is not apparent, but obscure. Yet, some expressed that people are the richest sources of evidence. Not only due to their ability to ‘unlock’ connections, but also because people are ‘living data.’ In the aggregate, they make up the public that the government is meant to serve. The challenge is widely understood to be converting public voices, the anecdotal, and other forms of bottom-up qualitative material into an approved evidence-base that can underpin policy. This raises the question around how to map these knowledges that are in some cases implicit and not being critically examined, or in other cases not being considered or integrated at all. Our hope is that using artistic methodologies in these workshops is one avenue to ‘see’ data flows and data practices through moulded clay, data and knowledge flow maps, objects as metaphors and landscapes in need of intervention.

Planning and policy: Reflective practitioners   

One undercurrent theme that emerged from the exercises that could further understanding on issues identified with data practices relates to planning and policy epistemologies, that is, the form of thinking that is most closely associated with professionals in planning and policy making. Government is large, bureaucratic and hierarchical. Practitioners, reflecting this structure, become entrenched in a pragmatic and process-oriented way of thinking. Factors that contribute to this are the need to be result-driven and the necessity to deliver on policies that are statutorily underpinned (i.e. already decided for them, leaving little to no power and/or flexibility). In the literature, planning and policy professions—along with social workers and administrators—are often critiqued for being apolitical. A linear form of thinking is required to complete tasks, ultimately reducing criticality.    

In a warm up at the start of the first workshop, participants were asked to team up with someone. Each holding a piece of clay, one participant spoke uninterrupted about their embodied experience of the various stages of a recent decision they had had to make at work, including the pressure they felt from different directions, while the other listened. After ten minutes, roles were reversed. In both instances of being a speaker and a listener, participants moulded a piece of clay.

In post-workshop conversations, this exercise elicited the most comments in that participants were surprised by how much they enjoyed the exercise. While many initially thought it would be outside of their comfort zone, they expressed that it was very worthwhile to get an insight into someone else’s way of thinking and approaches to the complexity of this work, processes that normally remain internal and are not often exchanged on in this manner.   

What is needed, as Donald Schön (1983) writes, is a ‘reflective practitioner’ who has the time and freedom to step outside of the daily practices that shape pragmatic thinking and enter a space of reflection (see here for a short video, focusing on teachers). The internal dialogue that occurs between daily ‘doing’ and reflection on actions being taken is the crux of change-making. Data is always and already advancing and in flux. Similarly, policies are continuously changing to remain relevant. One need only think of the shift to e-planning, the creation of Tailte Éireann, the Planning and Development Bill 2023, to name a few. Changes will go on in the attempt to match the pace of technological innovation. However, reflection time is critical. This is as important for the administrators on-the-ground who make and handle the data on a daily basis as for executives who make decisions on how and where data will flow.

Artistic Methodologies in Research   

As the artist working on a case study initially focused on the HNDA, Joan was closely involved in the earlier, more traditional interview process with Carla, which gave her an insight into data flows and practices at different scales of government and the existing issues and challenges. At the inception of the case study the focus was on the HNDA, so interviews were geared towards developing a workshop around that topic. The more we learned and immersed ourselves, the more we realised the challenge of tackling such a specific topic from the outside. For the workshops we decided to focus instead on issues around data and data practices that came up in the interviews but seemed to be present more broadly in the ecosystem, particularly around different kinds of evidence and their interpretation. We decided to invite a broader set of stakeholders to engage in our continued research process in a more interactive way. 

The workshops were an interesting introduction to all (including us as organisers) to using artistic methods to analyse and reflect on data practices in policy-making. Valuable insights emerged from both workshops, demonstrating the potential of arts-based methods as a frame to facilitate exchange among a diverse group of stakeholders. These methods can provide a route into a different mode of thinking and interacting, allowing different thoughts and connections to rise to the surface compared to what comes up in day-to-day work processes or traditional research interviews. This different lens through which to reflect, and the playful setting that allowed participants to take off their ‘professional hat,’ as one person put it, was widely appreciated by all.

One embedded component of Data Stories is to ‘test’ the effectiveness of research creation. To engage with the full potential of the concept of research creation, whereby new knowledge applicable to social science (in this case) and in turn to policy makers would be produced through a collaborative two-way process between the artist and researcher team and stakeholders, there would need to be a sustained commitment from all sides to a longer-term, open-ended process. While many participants expressed that they were somewhat sceptical at the beginning of the workshops, the methodologies and forms of engagement were more warmly received in the end than we had expected, proving a positive testing of the water around creative research methods.  

The lack of familiarity with these processes and the uncertainty of the outputs though, as well as the time needed to digest artistic processes and to facilitate co-creation, might limit the commitment that can come from policy makers on an institutional level to engage in more in-depth interdisciplinary processes that could ultimately have much more impact on ways of thinking and working. However, the curiosity and openness of many individuals indicates potential for smaller scales of  engagement in the sector that could serve as a step in that direction. Joan is currently continuing to engage one-on-one with planners, extending invitations to meet in their local authority areas to reflect and exchange on the relationship between evidence, local knowledge and the role of imagination in planning and public consultation, using artistic methodologies. These meetings will form the basis of a kind of experimental ethnography, looking at the specific position and role of planners in the ecosystem and its challenges and possibilities. 

Going through an artistic process is very different from the thinking and working processes of the stakeholders we were working with. It involves doing things that do not seem ‘productive,’ such as reflecting on elements of subjective experience, translating things between media, reading literary or philosophical texts, and generally approaching things from a different angle. This associative and more oblique way of working through things is something that stakeholders working in the highly pressured world of policy making could benefit from having the time to engage with, but the fact that it is so different is also what makes it hard to get people on board – it takes time, asks people to step out of their comfort zone, and is open-ended (there may not be a clear goal, or it needs to be defined during the process). This still seems like a big leap to take in this sector. Bureaucracy in Ireland is strong. Further, the system of governance in place challenges autonomy and power at lower scales. If the sector were more open and less results focused, would research creation become one pathway for change, through the shifting of perspectives and creation of space for collaborative thinking? While the reaction within government and bureaucracy to a challenging political and economic climate is often to increase control and centralisation, much research suggests that other approaches are needed: 

“Indeed, it could be argued that the focus on building the capacity for instrumental rationality — so as to secure specified outcomes and targets — risks actually reducing the capacity for flexibility, innovation and adaptability which is vital for policy-making in a runaway and uncertain world.” (Parsons 2004 p 48) 

Collaborations between the arts and government/policy making are challenging because of how different the outlooks and approaches are, but therein also lies their potential.

For more on Joan’s work see her website or Instagram. If you work in planning and would be interested in taking part in the research on the role of planners in the data ecosystem you can get in touch at joan.somersdonnelly@mu.ie.

References

Parsons, W. (2004). Not just steering but weaving: Relevant knowledge and the craft of building policy capacity and coherence. Australian journal of public administration, 63(1), 43-57.

Schön, D. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner. How professionals think in action, London: Temple Smith.