Following our successful Data Sketching workshops, City as Lab has collaborated with Lakeside Arts and City Arts to commission two pieces of art. Our open call invited artists to propose a project that would interpret a dataset on Nottingham air pollution. A community panel selected two artists from the impressive shortlist. 

The local artists, Rebecca Smith (Urban Projections) and Charlotte Tupper, were asked to respond creatively to the pollution dataset and to document their creative processes.  Both pieces - one a captivating digital video, the other an exquisite work on fabric - are now on public display.  

A subsequent workshop has also allowed us to explore further questions around how art can engage diverse audiences with complex data, how artistic representations influence the way people consume academic research, how artist-researcher collaborations can shift perspectives on research data, and what makes data an effective source of inspiration for artistic creations.