Hate crime in London by Dea Bankova

For this data art project, I looked at the last 10 years of recorded racially-motivated crimes in London.

Each of the circular shapes corresponds to 100 hate crime incidents reported to the police (London Met Police, London, UK). The definition of “Racist and Religious Hate Crime” in the UK includes non-criminal incidents triggered by the race, ethnicity, or religion of the victim. As the animation progresses, the increase in the number of shapes can be observed.

In contrast, the flowing veil surrounding the dark unhappy shapes serves as a representation of the sometimes invisible ‘shield’ of support, metaphorically capturing the acts of kindness that happen in the community all the time. While accounts of negative sentiments abound, positive stories exist as well.

For this project, I drew inspiration from artwork, NYU ITP project showcases and a visit to a Team Lab exhibition in Tokyo.
Data such as this often gets visualised in a dry and factual manner. I wanted to explore ways to show the scale and escalation over the years of the problem, as well as the unseen 'other side' of it. I didn't focus on showing the exact numbers, but rather chose to showcase the shape of the issue as I see it.