Data as a Story Exhibition 

Data as a Story Exhibition 

The OLH Open Access Award 2025 Awardee Report, authored by Amie Longthorne, Open Data Management Specialist, Liverpool John Moores University

The idea and getting started

At Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) we have been proactive raising awareness across all areas of research to make data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable (FAIR), helping embed open practices within the research lifecycle.  The idea to hold an exhibition ‘Data as a Story’ based on research data, was to highlight the breath of work at LJMU in a creative space, hoping to encourage more engagement in open data practices, learning and thinking in diverse ways. We wanted our researchers to highlight their work in different formats and challenge them to think about other data types they may collect beyond the ‘traditional’ perceptions and explore creative ways to communicate the story behind the findings. 

To get started, we created submission form to send to all our PGR’s and research community to invite them to be part of the exhibition, with a 3-month submission window. In that time, we offered creative drops in sessions as well as one to one support to help those who wanted to take part but did not know where to start, this helped spark discussion and submission ideas.  We received 48 applications from across both Faculty of Health, Innovation, Technology and Science and Faculty of Society and Culture. 38 of those were selected to take part. Once the applicants had been notified of outcomes, it then took 2 months to collect all the items needed to exhibit, create posters, window displays, exhibition guide and workshop programme.

Just some examples of items exhibited were:

• Photographs
• Collage
• Paintings
• Poetry
• Textile work
• Video
• Audio

Workshop Programme

We felt it was important to invite our PGRs and researchers to discuss their data collection and projects in person. The workshop programme created safe, facilitated spaces where participants could engage meaningfully with complex research topics, lived experience and creative methods. In total, 115 internal and external participants attended the workshops.

Private View

Over 60 people attended our private view night. The event was formally opened with welcome speeches from Keith George (Pro-Vice Chancellor, Research and Knowledge Exchange) and University Librarian Susannah Waters, reinforcing institutional support for creative research engagement and open research practices. The exhibition's greatest success was bringing people together around a topic that is often invisible. By placing research data at the heart of conversations, ‘Data as a Story’ encouraged visitors to see data as powerful stories.

Feedback

“An eye opener. Relaxing. Thought provoking.”
“This exhibition is a brilliant way to visualise research that is going on at LJMU all in one place.”
“Amazing exhibition. Really makes you think about data and its power to translate research and knowledge in a new way.”

Outcomes

• 54 individuals engaged with the open call, resulting in 48 submissions, of which 38 were accepted
• 6 events and workshops were delivered
• 10 datasets were deposited into LJMU’s data repository
• New external partnerships were formed, including with Age Concern Charity and internally

Data as a Story has sparked ongoing collaborations between researchers and the open research team and strengthened enthusiasm for creative approaches to research at LJMU.

The exhibition reinforced commitment to open research and open data and demonstrated demand for creative research engagement. Going forward we can use this as an established repeatable, scalable model for future delivery. Most importantly, feedback consistently showed that people want more! The project has laid strong foundations for a sustainable legacy of inclusive, creative and open research engagement at LJMU.

The exhibition guide can be found here

Thank you to the Open Library of Humanities for supporting this project, the exhibition has created momentum beyond its duration, new collaborations, follow‑on events and appetite for future iterations.