Visual Camp – Bringing policy makers and creatives to tell stories through visuals

Are you a policymaker who’s interested in how visuals could help communicate the policies/issues you’re working on?

Or are you a designer/creative who’s good at using visuals to communicate issues and would like to know how you could work with public services and civil society to communicate policies & issues?

Do you want to meet up over a few hours to see how you can work together to create visuals that communicate policy issues/scenarios in really compelling ways?

Come and join us on 10^th May between 5-9pm where you will be able to do all that and more!

1. Sign up to attend the event above (see Register button)
2. Tell us and vote which policy issues/scenarios you want people to create visuals for
3. Tweet about it using the hashtag #visualcamp

An event co-designed by participants of the DotGovLabs Innovation Hub and supported by HM Skunkworks, Urban Forum and CLG.

What do you mean by visuals?

Visuals are very powerful at capturing people’s imagination and getting them to reflect on what particular issues mean to them. From infographics that make sense of data to animations that help learn new tools, from modelling that helps design business cases to illustrations that help map a new policy, from animations (even in 3D) that reflect on an issue to photos that help map community resources

See this example for what we mean.

What’s the problem?

These examples above could provide so many opportunities for public services and civil society to better communicate policies and issues to the people they serve. But often we rely on powerpoint or leaflets because that’s all we know and we write in a way that people don’t always understand!

What’s the opportunity?

So what if we could give people who are very good at telling stories and communicating through visuals an understanding of how they could better work with public services & civil society and give policy makers new perspectives on how they present their policies and issues they cover and make them more engaging to the public.

What’s the story?

On the DotGovLabs Innovation Hub community (see more here), a few of us – policy wonks, geeks, social entrepreneurs, civil society organisers – thought that a way of trying to achieve the above, we could start by getting both those groups of people together to test different ways of communicating policy and the issues these cover (i.e. digital exclusion, community rights).

How will it work?

In advance of the event, we want you to tell us and vote which policy issues/scenarios you want people to create visuals for. Go here where you can either vote on those we’ve put forward or suggest your own! The top four will be the challenges we work on the day itself.

Examples of challenges that people might want to create visuals for could include “how community groups could help provide public services” to “how to tackle youth unemployment” to “what the government ICT strategy means”.

On the day itself, you will able to get into small groups to brainstorm ideas and develop visuals on these challenges.

There will also be live demos of how other people have used visuals to communicate issues and policies, watch this space!

So that’s pretty much the agenda, but if you have any ideas on other activities or how this could work better, then tweet them using the #visualcamp or even better sign up at https://dotgovlabs.direct.gov.uk and go to the VisualCamp page.

What’s being provided?

The people who run the DotGovLabs Innovation Hub have very kindly offered us the use of room at Communities & Local Government on the 10^th May between 5-9pm.

We’ve got the room at Communities & Local Government, Eland House, Bressenden Place, SW1E 5DU London.

Please feel free to bring your laptops, cameras or camcorders.

Is this for you?

Although we’re particularly looking for people from public services and civil society organisations who are involved in developing policy and issues to people and people who are good at communicating issues using visuals (designers/creatives/etc), if you’re interested in how visuals can change the world, then we’d love you to come along and share your enthusiasm!

How can you get to the event?

The building is a short walking distance from Victoria main line and Victoria underground station. Bus numbers 2, 8, 11, 16, 24, 36, 38, 52, 73, 82, 148, 185, 211, 239, 436, 507, C1 and C10 all go to Victoria.

When you get there, go to reception and say you’re here for Visual Camp.

So remember to sign up, tell your friends and put forward your ideas, otherwise, see you there!