Data Para Todes intends to improve data literacy among the Latine Community. The main goal is to learn, collect, analyze, clean, and visualize data to create stories about environmental justice within the community.
The first instance of the project happened through a collaboration with a local non-profit, Bottom Line. Via workshops held throughout the summer and fall, lead artist and designer Lina Maria Giraldo worked with first-generation Latine students to learn how to create individual working prototype sensors to collect indoor air quality samples and then analyze it. The cohort then learned how to clean the data and visualize it using industry standards tools such as Excel and tableau.
This hands-on involvement in every stage allowed the students to understand the data’s values and implications and thereby claim ownership. Ultimately the project is designed to enable students to gain data literacy skills and utilize it to be able to tell stories from their perspectives. Throughout the collaborative process of the fall of 2022, Giraldo and the students analyzed Latine demographic data from the US census to understand geographic locations, highlighting the income within their community compared with other races.
The completion of the project’s first step was an exhibition at Boston Cyberarts Gallery located at Jamaica Plain. Together with Giraldo, students used the gallery space to realize their own data stories, creating an immersive and physical experience of visualization from data ownership to understanding data already accessible. The exhibition’s design was a participatory process between the Latine Student Cohort and the lead artist Giraldo where they shared their finding and stories.
The project was made possible through a collaboration between Emerson College, Boston Cyberats, and Bottom Line. The alignment of goals allowed seamless collaboration as Emerson’s interest in promoting data literacy, especially within environmental justice communities, intersects with Bottom Line’s goal of improving said communities throughout education. Cyberarts also helped fund the project to promote art that intersects with technology and involves the community. Giraldo’s close relationship with all three organizations allowed her to ensure that all their goals were being met and that they were taking full advantage of the project’s benefits.