After Birmingham’s local elections in May, I found myself wondering how the city’s political landscape and civic landscape fitted together.
The information existed but it was scattered across dozens of websites, reports and datasets, so I started building a tool to bring it together.
The more I explored, the more questions appeared:
Where can I find evidence of where a charity actually works, rather than just where it’s registered?
Are some activities under-represented because organisations deliberately keep a low profile to protect the people they support?
Which organisations should know about each other but probably don’t?
Then I realised something else:
I was only asking the questions that occurred to me.
If I really wanted to understand Birmingham’s civic landscape, I needed something that could connect knowledge, challenge my assumptions and suggest lines of enquiry I might never have considered.
That’s the direction the Civic Atlas is taking.
Version 0.5 is an important milestone because it’s the point where the project starts becoming more than a directory. It’s beginning to build evidence-based understanding.
Imagine where this could lead. We might uncover gaps in provision, untapped resources and partnership opportunities – or simply ask better questions about the places we care about.
I’ve written more about where it’s heading, and why I think it could become a genuinely useful way of understanding places.