GEOLOOM: Cultural Mapping in Baltimore

The GEOLOOM co>map is an online, interactive map of Baltimore City featuring arts and culture information along with community indicators such as census demographics, children and family health, and crime and safety data. The co in GEOLOOM co>map stands for community, collaboration, and cohesion in Baltimore.

Awards for GEOLOOM co>map

• June 2018 Association of Public Data Users Data Viz Award
• September 2017 Harvard Ash Center Map of the Month

Purpose of Mapping Arts & Culture

Arts and cultural activities contribute to the vitality of neighborhoods by creating shared spaces, stimulating community-based economic opportunities, and transforming the physical and emotional notions of place. As Baltimore’s communities, growth, and economy are increasingly tied to arts and culture, a mapping tool to track related data has become essential to bettering the city’s future.

As the project manager, BNIA-JFI supports the development of the cultural mapping tool by collecting and analyzing arts and culture data in a common, centralized measurement system. By establishing a system for mapping and correlating arts and culture data, an interactive, web-based, and publicly-accessible mapping tool allows users to:

• demonstrate the impact of the arts and creative placemaking throughout Baltimore;
• foster new ways of improving the city and its neighborhoods over time;
• tangibly determine how to more equitably distribute resources; and
• heighten awareness of art in neighborhoods among cultural institutions, businesses, and elected officials.

Data Collection

In order to best capture the dynamic definitions and states of art and culture in Baltimore, data is collected from a variety of sources and methodologies that can be tracked and replicated over time. This includes:

• citywide administrative arts data from private, non-profit, and governmental entities to track established data sets such as publicly-funded artwork, arts organizations, artistic and cultural activities lists, and arts funding;
• crowdsourced information from users and organization to enrich existing data sets and collect community-based and local data that has never been agglomerated in an accessible form before;
• results from a participation survey that shows how residents from different communities engage with arts and cultural opportunities; and
• Vital Signs, which provides community-level data as context for the GEOLOOM co>map.

To learn more about the results of the participation survey, see the “Cultural Participation in Baltimore” report.

To learn more about the sources of our data, please see our Data Dictionary.

To learn more about our process, please see our Cultural Mapping Handbook.

Community Scope, Volume 6, Issue 1. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond

About GEOLOOM co>map

The GEOLOOM co>map tool adds cultural data that is a vital but often missing element in the conversations about neighborhoods. The GEOLOOM co>map is rooted in the idea that arts and culture play a significant role in fostering the vitality of a place. Neighborhood-based arts and cultural activity can have an impact on residents’ attachment to their community, the overall economic conditions in their neighborhood, and the quality of life for the entire city.

The GEOLOOM co>map can be used for research, planning, exploration, and investment. It was designed for city planners, artists, civic leaders, residents, large or small businesses, neighborhood associations, arts and culture organizations, non-profit or for-profit real estate developers, private foundations, and government funders. It can help in decision-making about the City’s future. Through visualization, the GEOLOOM co>map can aid cultural institutions, businesses, and elected officials by heightening their awareness of how arts and culture is integrated in Baltimore’s neighborhoods as well as potential audiences, customers, and constituents.

The tool is available at www.geoloom.org.

If you have questions or comments, please email [email protected].

Check out all the GEOLOOM videos by Wide Angle Youth Media!