Digging into Data: Data Journalism for Community Reporters

The Greater Govanhill CIC is a community media project founded in 2020 which aims to challenge stereotypes, break cultural barriers, and unite the community.

Glasgow’s Govanhill is one of the most ethnically diverse neighbourhoods in Scotland, but also experiences high levels of deprivation.

Through this project, the team will provide training courses on data journalism skills, which will be made available to people in Govanhill who have experience of marginalisation. The participants will be equipped with the skills to dig into data around issues that they care about, and which also affect other people locally. They will also be empowered through community reporter skills to be able to tell these stories, with a particular focus on solutions journalism, discovering the positive outliers in datasets and investigating who’s done it better. They hope to inspire others to make change and hold power to account.

Ten participants will directly benefit from the skills they learn, and there will be wider benefits throughout the local Govanhill community. The project team will publish the work developed through the course in a special issue of their magazine, ‘Greater Govanhill’, and 4,000 copies will be published and distributed for free in the neighbourhood.

Community fund

New for 2025-26, a portion of our Public Engagement Fund has been ringfenced for a pilot community fund, supporting a community organisation to engage people in data research.

The Digging into Data project has been funded through our pilot community fund, and will be supported with guidance from RDS data professionals in addition to funding.

More information

Visit the Greater Govanhill CIC website

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Header image credit: Iain McLellan