Stories of Us
May 2026 - December 2026
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (LUCIA Fund)
PI: Plymouth University with partners: Hastings Commons Community Land Trust, Nudge Community Builders, Plymouth Octopus Project (POP), The Box, Prospect Brixham CIC, Social Life, The Data Place, , University of Cambridge
As part of the AHRC Locally Unlocking Culture through Inclusive Access (LUCIA) funding, this project connects with local communities in Plymouth and Hastings to explore the role of data in decision-making about their neighbourhoods and cities. The network project explores how local communities can be better supported to take part in decisions that affect their neighbourhoods looking to address the gap between gathering information, having the shared tools and resources needed to support grass-roots community knowhow to influence change.
Within the wider project that seeks to engage communities to explore the connection between data and stories about their knowledge and emotions connected to where they live, I am focusing on the development of workshops for teenagers about how AI is used in this way and what might be missed as a result.
Research Workshops
The workshops were designed to allow young people the chance to explore what they like about their city and what they would like to change. This was then considered in relation to activities that explore how AI works. Specifically, we looked at what they thought a dataset is, who chooses how images in datasets get labelled and what might be missed from their own lived experiences of place. Finally, the young people used Gen AI to produce images of how they wanted to improve their city to see if it was capable of bringing their ideas to life.
One of the workshops was in collaboration with CIC Fotonow, and as part of the workshop they led young people on a walk around Plymouth city centre to photograph things that interested them or wanted to change.
