Neighbouring Data
2023

Neighbouring Data draws together and amplifies place-based data on pride, culture, heritage, health and wellbeing. Data was collected from preceding projects including Towns and the Cultural Economies of Recovery and Feeling Towns. This work offers insight into the kinds of qualitative data that local authorities and communities need to inform their place-based decision making. We sought to understand how qualitative and quantitative data can be generated, connected and visualised. Our findings shaped local authority practice and policies, and the project is in dialogue with Southampton’s 2025 City of Culture bid.

Neighbouring Data delivered three key policy outputs. First, we published a report outlining our interim findings on data observatories, which were shared at a knowledge exchange event in 2023. Second, we produced a think piece for the Local Government Association (LGA) on the role of lived experience in decision making. Third, we co-designed an experimental model for using qualitative data in decision making, called the Neighbourhood Insight Engine.

We provided creative practitioners and data scientists with a resource pack of qualitative data comprising narratives, images, poems, photos, sculptures, videos and maps. In a workshop, we asked them to interrogate, reimagine and transform the qualitative data in ways that could be shared. The outputs include: