Community: AI

We’re building a community AI lab that combines:

• 🧠 Practical workshops on open-source AI tools
• 🛠️ Local creative workflows enhanced by AI (e.g. for music, zines, events, video, grant writing)
• 🔍 Critical awareness of AI’s risks—from surveillance to hallucination to misuse
• 🤝 Networked community nodes that can host their own Co:AI workshops and monitor the evolving role of AI in daily life
• 🔮 Experimental rituals that connect AI with the body, symbol, and rhythm—via our sister project, PhaseSpace

🔹 Our mission

To demystify AI and empower communities—especially underrepresented and neurodivergent creatives—to:

• Use AI on their own terms
• Build non-corporate, open-source tools
• Understand and monitor the risks of AI (misinformation, erasure, control)
• Create publicly-owned knowledge systems that resist centralisation

We’re aligning with:

• 📘 The UK Government’s AI Opportunities Plan (focused on responsible innovation and widespread access)
• 📊 The UK Industry Strategy for AI (encouraging sector-specific uptake, including creative industries)
• 🧪 Research findings from the AAAI 2025 Panel and the new Chain-of-Thought Monitorability white-paper, which both call for human-in-the-loop reasoning and better public oversight

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🔹 Who we’re looking for

We’re looking for:

• Artists, educators, and organisers who want to teach or learn AI skills
• Technologists, coders, and data people interested in building open, ethical AI tools
• Philosophers, ritualists, and symbol-makers who want to shape how society relates to AI
• Students, researchers, and institutions interested in AI safety, public infrastructure, and equity

No degree or experience required—just curiosity and commitment to collaborative intelligence.

🔹 What we’re doing first

🌀 Phase 0.1 – Summer–Autumn 2025

• Prototype 3 Co:AI workshops (AI for creative work, AI safety 101, chain-of-thought tracing)
• Publish the Co:AI Protocol for Consensual Hallucination
• Host 2 open salons + 1 red-team ritual performance at Club395
• Build a mini toolkit (simple CoT visualiser, prompts, notebooks)
• Begin outreach to partner venues, local councils, and researchers

🌀 Phase 1 – Winter 2025

• Launch a Co:AI Fellowship (3-month part-time)
• Train 5–10 community AI educators to run workshops in their own spaces
• Develop open-source monitor prototypes that align with current AI safety literature
• Connect with PhaseSpace to explore symbolic + embodied interfaces for AI legibility and flow

🌀 Phase 2 – 2026

• Seek investment from BridgeAI, OpenAI Community Fund, and UK AI Safety Institute
• Deploy Co:AI as a replicable model for grassroots venues across the UK
• Feed results into UK industry dialogues around ethical AI and creative sector uptake

🔹 Call-out: Join us now

We’re just getting started—but the time is urgent.

If you’re an artist, educator, coder, organiser, or simply AI-curious—we need your mind.

📍 We’re based in Bristol at Club395, but open to collaborators across the UK and beyond.

🌐 Whether you want to help build open-source workflows, host a workshop, or shape how your community uses AI, Co:AI is yours to grow.

📧 Email: connect@club395.uk

Or on Instagram @threeninefive.bristol