Imagine you’re trying to understand the community life of a neighbourhood.
You can usually find lists of organisations. You can explore public datasets. You can read council reports, charity websites and local strategies.
But they’re all in different places.
Even when the information exists, understanding a place takes time, experience and a fair amount of detective work. You also need to know what questions to ask in the first place.
The Civic Atlas starts from a simple idea:
What if understanding a place was as easy as looking it up?
Connecting knowledge that already exists
Councils, charities, community organisations and researchers already know an enormous amount about the places they work.
The problem isn’t a lack of knowledge.
The problem is that the knowledge is scattered across hundreds of organisations, websites, datasets and reports.
The Civic Atlas aims to bring that knowledge together, connect it and gradually build a richer understanding of places.
It isn’t trying to replace local knowledge – it’s trying to connect it.
More than a directory
The Atlas begins by collecting information about organisations, neighbourhoods and publicly available datasets.
But collecting information isn’t the interesting part.
The interesting part is turning information into understanding.
Every insight is intended to be backed by evidence rather than assertion.
Where interpretation is needed, the reasoning is recorded alongside the evidence so it can be reviewed, challenged and improved over time.
Human judgement is part of the process, not something hidden behind the software.
Ultimately, the aim isn’t simply to answer questions.
It’s to help people ask better ones.
Where this is heading
The Civic Atlas isn’t being built all at once.
Each version tackles a different level of understanding.
| Version | Focus | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| v0.1 | Find organisations | What charities exist? |
| v0.2–0.4 | Find by place | What’s in this ward? |
| v0.5 | Understand organisations | Build evidence-based profiles of organisations and where they actually work. |
| v0.6 | Understand places | Build rich profiles of wards and neighbourhoods. |
| v0.7 | Understand relationships | Reveal connections, gaps and patterns. |
| v0.8 | Help people collaborate | Surface opportunities for partnerships. |
| v0.9 | Find opportunities | Highlight where support or investment could have the greatest impact. |
| v1.0 | Transform understanding | Deliver civic intelligence for charities, funders, councils and communities. |
Version 0.5: From directory to knowledge
Today I’ve released version 0.5.
For me, this is the first major milestone.
Until now, the Civic Atlas was primarily a way of finding organisations and seeing where they appeared to operate.
Now it begins building its own evidence-based understanding.
It can identify which Birmingham wards it believes an organisation is actively working in and, crucially, explain why it thinks that.
Each conclusion is accompanied by the evidence that supports it.
Where editorial judgement has been used, that judgement is recorded rather than hidden.
That means the Atlas builds knowledge over time instead of repeating the same research every time a question is asked.
Why Birmingham? Why charities?
The project has to start somewhere.
I’ve chosen Birmingham because it’s a large, diverse city and it’s where I live.
I’ve started with registered charities because they sit at the heart of civic life and there’s enough public information available to begin building something useful.
Today there are more than 2,500 charities in the Atlas.
Over time I’d like to broaden that to include Community Interest Companies, B Corps, public bodies and other organisations that contribute to civic life.
The ambition is much bigger than Birmingham.
Birmingham is simply where the idea is being tested.
Next: Understanding places
Version 0.6 shifts the emphasis from organisations to places.
Instead of simply listing organisations within a ward, each ward page begins answering a much more interesting question:
“Tell me about this place.”
That means combining demographic information, deprivation, community assets, political context, health indicators and local organisations into a single evidence-based picture.
Navigation also becomes richer.
Which wards are similar?
Which organisations work across neighbouring communities?
Where are the obvious strengths?
Where are the gaps?
Beyond that…
The really exciting part comes afterwards.
Once organisations, places and evidence are connected, entirely new kinds of questions become possible:
Which communities appear underserved?
Where are partnerships already emerging?
Where might collaboration have the greatest impact?
Where are the biggest gaps in our understanding?
Those aren’t questions any single dataset can answer.
They emerge when knowledge is connected.
Have a play
The Civic Atlas is still at an early stage, but it’s evolving quickly.
If you explore it today and come back in a few weeks, you’ll almost certainly find something new.
I’d genuinely love your feedback (there’s even a form for that).
This project is only worthwhile if it becomes useful to the people trying to understand places and strengthen civic life.