Tim took part in this two-day workshop organised by Liverpool Data Co-operative, ESRC Digital Good Network and Elgon Social, all facilitated by Reema Patel. Margaret Colling, member of the PVAI People’s Advisory Panel, facilitated by Connected by Data, also took part in the workshop, speaking in a fireside chat on practice based insights.
Tim has written up the brief reflections below.
Building Participation and Power
We arrived at the workshop venue, the extremely scenic Ness Botanical Gardens just outside Liverpool, to find bags of Lego at each table - ready for the first activity where we were invited to build a representation of our work as a means to introduce ourselves to others around our tables. We returned throughout the event to Lego-enabled discussions: taking time to create physical representations of AI systems, and participatory data stewardship, as the event sought to foster an in-depth interdisciplinary discussion about the meanings and methods of participatory data and AI governance.
The workshop brought together an impressive spread of participants, from staff from the ICO and AI Safety Institute, to commissioners and practitioners of participatory practice from the BBC, Wellcome Trust, Royal Academy of Engineering, Mayoral Authorities, and Devolved and National Governments, all alongside academics, members of the public, and grassroots practitioners working with gig workers, migrant communities and local communities. Whilst at times this meant finding shared context and reference points was challenging, as we responded to a range of frameworks for thinking systemically about spaces and challenges for participation around AI governance, it was also incredibly valuable to spark reflection on the work needed in different spaces to make the case for affected communities to be given voice in decisions over data and AI.
Briefly sharing and building on our Global Citizen Deliberation on AI work, I was able to dig deeper into the framework of ‘focus’, ‘forum’ and ‘form’ as a means to think about the different kinds of questions that publics might engage on around AI, the need to fit methods to the question, and the need for a theory of change that doesn’t end with a report, but that helps mobilise messages from public engagement into ongoing organisational dialogue and decision making.
One of the workshop activities, that invited us to think about the design of an inclusive and participatory data stewardship initiative, using a data lifecycle canvas as a foundation, offered a good opportunity to think about how our Good Governance Game methods cards might be adapted in a more ‘playboard’ format (learning from the Playful By Design cards).
The Chatham House rule of the event makes writing up other reflections a bit more challenging: as with convenings like this, much of the greatest value is in the informal conversations around the edges of workshop activities. However, I leave with connections made and renewed, and encouraged to see a growing community of practice thinking critically and practically about different spaces and places around data and AI for greater people power.