On 30 April, the University’s Sibling Data Cafe public engagement project was a finalist in the Community category at the Scottish Event Awards. What are the Scottish Event Awards? The Scottish Event Awards celebrate world-class events ranging from large-scale festivals to association events, charity events, conferences, and sporting events. Winners and finalists represent the very best in the Scottish events and festivals sector. One of the Award categories is Best Community Event, which is for locally-driven events that bring communities together. Sibling Data Cafe was up against winner EH32 Live and finalist Menopausal! What’s Your Superpower? Loved it. Felt very empowering. Wonderful to come together with like-minded people Sibling Café participant Voting with ducks at a Sibling Data Cafe Based at the University of Edinburgh’s Moray House School of Education and Sport and funded by Research Data Scotland, the Sibling Data Cafes for Care Experienced People project focussed on the importance of the sibling relationships of care experienced people. The project was a collaboration between academics, care experienced co-researchers and project partners – Scotland-wide partnership Stand Up For Siblings, The Promise Scotland - alongside poet Craig Houston from the University of Glasgow. The team held two ‘pop up’ Sibling Cafés where care experienced individuals and their supporters took part in conversations and a range of creative activities, from graffiti boards to ‘voting with ducks’. Through this, café visitors had opportunities to: Learn more about the Children Looked After in Scotland dataset, particularly data on sibling relationships Share their messages with data analysts about the ‘stories behind the numbers’ – i.e. the lived reality of care experienced sibling relationships Share their priorities for how they would like administrative data to be used in the future to make a positive difference to young care experienced siblings. One of the outcomes of the cafes was a poem about the sibling relationships of care experienced individuals and the data that are gathered nationally on these. Poem about the sibling relationships of care experienced people: poem. Further information Sibling Data Cafes project: Sibling Data Cafes for Care Experienced People | Research Data Scotland Scottish Event Awards: eventit.org.uk/scottish-event-awards/ A lovely thing for the community that we worked with to know that it had been recognised in this way. Katie Cebula Project Lead Sibling Data Cafe This article was published on Tuesday 23 June 2026
