Turning community knowledge into the evidence that informs and drives change.
About Civic Intelligence Labs
Civic Intelligence Labs is an open platform where communities, researchers, and civic actors come together to turn community voices and lived experience into evidence that strengthens agency and informs action. The Labs bring together three distinct but connected offerings, each designed to ensure that insight comes from communities themselves, and goes back to serve them.
Through Civic Intelligence Labs, a diverse community of researchers, practitioners, and civic actors will generate, analyse, and apply evidence that helps communities shape the decisions that affect their lives.
Why it exists
Too often, research about communities is done without them. Data is collected, analysed, and used to inform decisions that communities have no say in. The result is evidence that misrepresents, excludes, or simply does not reflect the realities of the people it is meant to serve.
There is an urgent need to build intelligence from the ground up, rooted in community voices, shaped by lived experience, and designed to strengthen agency rather than extract from it.
What we offer
01
Community Research Programme
FreeCollaborativeCommunity-based
Research that starts and ends with communities
A structured programme where communities and researchers work together to identify questions, collect data, and generate evidence that reflects local realities and strengthens agency. Participants gain practical research skills and leave with evidence they own and can use and share independently.
02
Civic Data Sprints
In-personIntensiveCommunity-based
Bringing data collection into your community
Short, focused sprints run in communities to collect, analyse, and apply local data for civic action. Participants leave with a stronger understanding of how data works, how it can work for them, and the agency to shape how it is collected and used in their context.
03
Intelligence to Action Programme
CollaborativeEvidence-drivenLong-term
From community insight to informed action
Communities and organisations identify a specific question or challenge, and work with our team to design and conduct research that generates evidence for action. The focus is on co-creation, community ownership, and building the capacity to generate and use evidence independently.
How the programme works
01
Identify
A community or organisation identifies a specific question or challenge they want to understand better.
02
Design
We work together to design a research approach that fits the context, capacity, and goals of the community.
03
Collect and analyse
We work alongside the community to collect, analyse, and interpret evidence that reflects local realities.
04
Act and share
The community uses the evidence to inform action, advocacy, or decision making, and shares learnings openly with the broader field.
What you take with you
Practical research and data skills grounded in your context
Evidence generated from and for your community
A peer network of researchers and civic practitioners
The capacity to generate and use evidence independently
The agency to shape decisions that affect your community
What we are working toward
A growing body of community-generated evidence, openly shared
Communities with the agency to generate and use evidence that reflects their realities
Research that informs advocacy, policy, and decision-making from the ground up
Evidence and learnings from each programme shared openly with the broader field
Decisions shaped by the communities they affect
Who it is for
Community organisations, researchers, civic actors, and practitioners looking to generate and use evidence rooted in community voices and lived experience. The Labs are especially suited to communities and organisations currently excluded from research and data processes, who want to shape how evidence is generated and used in their context, on their own terms.
Insights that start and end with communities
Every piece of research and evidence we generate is made openly available, so communities and practitioners can keep building knowledge on their own terms, without dependency.
18
Research projects completed
12
Communities contributing evidence
30+
Insights informing advocacy and action
5
Open datasets published
Also part of our work