UVA The Charlottesville Regional Equity Atlas: Co-Creating with Our Community

Having piloted a prototype Equity Atlas for the Charlottesville area with community partners, this project will use participatory methods to engage a wide cross-section of community members to evaluate and advance this technology, to mentor high school and college students in contributing its development, and to contribute to the reparation of trust between the university and community by making this data and technology platform a truly public resource. This generous PIT-UN funding supported a youth-focused community effort to delve into the local impacts of global climate change. Our team of faculty members, data scientists, graduate students, community partners, interns, and local youth co-created data visualizations, art exhibits, curriculum, and youth programming that was adaptive and responsive to community interest and needs. We believe this truly highlights the promise of public interest technology. Community-engaged scholarship necessitates flexibility in scope and timing. During the course of our grant period, we had to make several changes to the project, including focusing on a more specific topic and extending the timeline for an additional 6-month period. The goals and objectives of the project stayed consistent however. We co-created a regional Equity Atlas, mentored area youth, created accessible data platforms, taught community members how to use data sources, generated new data resources for our community, and modeled community co-creation.