Video: How Data Engages CItizens in Kansas City

Data sets are usually presented in numbers, graphs and spreadsheets, but recently Kansas City, Missouri, decided to expand the idea of what data visualization can be, by sponsoring an exhibit called the "Art of Data."

Artists were invited to take data from Kansas City's open data portal and represent it in new ways. Residents of the city responded with lots of innovative artwork, and attended the exhibit in droves.

"These are people who would not come to a city hall meeting or a budget hearing, but now they're in an art gallery and then suddenly, they're staring at this art on the wall and they're engaging with the city and talking about data and city statistics in a way they wouldn't have otherwise," said Chris Hernandez, Kansas City's director of city communications. "That's what you want with community engagement is that you get people involved who haven't been involved."

To learn more check out the video below, from Socrata: 

(Image via Ollyy/ Shutterstock.com)