This is a guest blog post by  Rahul Bhargava, Research Specialist at the MIT Center for Civic Media, and Gabi Sobliye, Programme Coordinator at Tactical Tech. They will be leading the OKFestival session Low-Tech Data: Story-Finding and Storytelling

Visualization is hot right now, too hot. This is problem, because in our quest to learn the latest tool and grab the latest data we’ve forgotten that the technology isn’t the important part of storytelling with data. The most important part of all this work is using information to bring people to create the change they want to see in their community and the world. In the majority of the world, there aren’t computers around to help this happen.

On the last day of OKFestival we are looking forward to facilitating a workshop designed around finding and telling powerful stories without the use of computers. We’re looking to do two things; firstly to find creative ways to increase data literacy and secondly; to challenge the dominant narrative that computer generated info-graphics or complex data visualisations are the most effective way to communicate a data-driven story. If we want to use data effectively in most of the world, we have to go low-tech.

Luckily, low-tech is fun! We’ll share with you some of our activities and processes for during this work. Rahul’s been playing with these ideas for the last 10 years as part of this Data Therapy project. He works at the MIT Center for Civic Media, doing civic technology and workshops with community groups around the world. Gabi comes from Berlin based Tactical Technology Collective, an NGO that works on the intersection of activism, information and design. We came together because of our shared interest in exploring the potential of low-tech data representation. We’ve both been frustrated by the focus on tech, even in places it isn’t the right fit.

So why does this work? We know that data can empower or disempower people. Algorithms, technical language, unfamiliar processes – these all leave many communities incapable of working with data, or understanding data-driven discussions. Most people don’t “speak data”. Small Data is the stuff communities work with. We believe that hands-on activities that let you play with data can empower community groups that work with Small Data to advocate, inform, and inspire.

We want to help empower communities to find and tell data stories when you don’t have expensive tech. Idolised data visualisations spread virally and are sources of inspiration to many advocacy groups, however these are difficult to replicate due to the funds, time and internal capacity. This is often a source of frustration for advocacy groups. By facilitating this workshop we hope to encourage those with less resources to experiment with exciting creative data presentation techniques. Created away from computers, these can placed in positions where offline communities interact with them in real life.

So how do we do low-tech data? Well, we start off by helping people play with data. We’ve developed and tested a set of hands-on activities that introduce finding stories in data and representing these stories through building physical objects, data performances or drawings (to name a few). You'll leave with activities and approaches to help a group of people find and tell a data-driven story without using expensive technology.

Looking forward to seeing some of your there! Find us at #lowtechdata