135 artists applied and eight were chosen to spend a week at KWMC in March 2011, visiting locations and groups around Knowle West and conceptualising potential arts projects based on local needs and data. KWMC consulted with residents who’d met the artists to select four artists to pursue their ideas further.
Susanne Stahl chose to represent live weather data as a series of coloured icons, allowing people to compare the weather in Knowle West to cities across the globe.
Julie Myers worked with the KWMC team to develop an online map of fruit trees around Knowle West and a QR code, which would later be developed in the 2012 partnership project Fruit Trees For The Future.
Paul Hurley examined the data generated during, and in response to, live performances. He explored how archival media, such as photography, can be “live” and looked at ways of using social media to enable people to participate in documentation of a live event.
Richard Layzell gathered a range of ‘local data’, including energy consumption data, wildlife sightings, purchases and transactions, and ancestry across Knowle West, building up a picture of the character of the community in the process. He also visited Greenfield Primary School and worked with pupils to investigate and record biodiversity data.
Between 30–40 residents were involved in the Whose Data? week and two of the artists worked with children and young people from the local area. Paul Hurley and Dane Watkins went on to develop the Connection / Time interface, where live events can be documented and engaged with online in real-time, using archived Twitter posts, photographs and annotations. Richard Layzell returned to Knowle West in summer 2012 to work with primary school pupils to prepare an exhibition that invited audiences to consider what data reveals about their communities, environment and themselves.
