Stories of Us

Stories of Us will empower communities to use data to tell stories, capture inequalities and express felt experience of place in order to create more inclusive urban futures. The project aims to address the feeling of powerlessness many people in the UK experience in relation to their local communities and decision-making processes. A significant portion of the population feel they lack control over decisions impacting their neighbourhoods, though many recognize the potential of local residents and community groups to improve their environments. The approach builds upon the concept of "experts by experience," which aligns with the increasing emphasis on integrating everyday experiences into local governance, as highlighted in recent reports like the AHRC place report. The core research challenge is that local decision-making often overlooks these lived and emotional experiences of place. This project seeks to address this gap by empowering marginalized voices, shifting power dynamics, and ensuring communities are actively involved in decisions that affect them. A key method is to build community capacity to use data in a way that fosters engagement with local decision-making processes. This will be done through participatory data practices to ensure that communities can take ownership of the data, allowing them to express and communicate their lived experiences. The project will engage communities through innovative data methods, such as emotional data gathering and creative storytelling. The beneficiaries of this project are the communities in areas of deprivation, where people often feel their voices are ignored. These places, often on the periphery economically and geographically, are rich in social capital and community wealth, even if they lack material resources. By empowering these communities, the project aims to help them take back control over decisions that impact their lives. The methodology follows a participatory action research (PAR) framework, which centres the voices of marginalized communities, promoting collaboration between community members, researchers, data practitioners, and cultural organisations. The project's focus on innovative data collection methods, including emotional data audits and AI demystification workshops, aims to equip communities with the skills necessary to gather, analyze, and use data effectively to drive change. The project will build an interdisciplinary, collaborative research network that includes community grassroots organizations and academics including organizations Nudge Community Builders, Hastings Commons, POP Collective, Social Life, and The Data Place. Each with experience in community building, data engagement, and local regeneration. The project will focus on two UK places—Hastings and Plymouth—both of which face significant social and economic challenges, offering the project an opportunity to engage deeply with underrepresented communities. The project will proceed in three phases over 12 months: discover and define (focusing on capacity building), development of data-driven activism (including micro-grant funding for local interventions), and the delivery of outcomes (with a final festival and policy analysis). The overall goal is to create a sustainable, scalable model of community-led data engagement that fosters inclusion, strengthens civic ties, and informs future policies on urban regeneration and community governance.