A mosaic-like image of clouds, made of server and data centre components, with the Let's Get Real logo and 'AI' superimposed on it.
Nadia Piet + AIxDESIGN & Archival Images of AI / Better Images of AI / Cloud Computing / CC-BY 4.0

This phase ran from April to December 2025 and focussed on AI by exploring tools, use cases, governance and strategy, all in the context of what it means to be a cultural organisation trying to get the best from technology. 

We explored AI with playfulness, vulnerability and in ways that offered genuine room for innovation. By taking part in the programme, organisations were supported on a jouney of positive change and transformation.  

 

Overview

This was the twelfth Let’s Get Real and we worked with 15 forward thinking organisations to grow their digital confidence, skills and literacy through a process of collaborative action research. 

The project: 

  • Started with a guided look at areas where AI is already embedded in daily life, including common digital tools and societal domains such as healthcare, education and data analysis 

  • Explored AI foundations and ethics and ways to develop the confidence to critique AI and be in those conversations

  • Considered our emotional responses towards AI and how these might inform our learning and application of related technologies 

  • Presented a series of current, relevant use cases for AI in cultural sector contexts 

  • Shared insights from other AI-related research and activity within the cultural sector 

  • Supported participants in carrying out practical experimentation with an AI tool in their own settings – something they choose that aligns with their purpose, activity and workflows

  • Supported participants to explore and adapt existing AI policy templates and toolkits that offer guidance around governance and strategy, for use in their context

Upcoming events

Final report

Logos for the organisations taking part: Amgueddfa Cymru, Art UK, Sheffield Theatres, The Box, Edinburgh Fringe, Royal Academy of Arts, Bradford Museums, The Audience Agency, London Museum, The National Gallery, London Symphony Orchestra, Goethe Institute, Scottish Ballet, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, The Queens Hall, Arts Marketing Association
Participating organisations in Let's Get Real AI

Project Partners

Supporting experiments using AI requires high levels of technical skill and digital literacy. For this cohort we are partnering with Jocelyn Burnham, one of the UK's leading independent artificial intelligence consultants, trainers, and speakers, specialising in AI innovation through creativity and playfulness. 

Jocelyn Burnham Headshot

To support the cohort in thinking about governance and policy issues around AI we are working with AMA and tapping into their existing work in this area. AMA are sponsoring this cohort.  

Arts Marketing Association logo

Bloomberg Connects is supporting the project and allowing the cohort to benefit from their expertise in the creation of tools and technologies designed to make culture more accessible.

Who is it for?

Let’s Get Real is designed for any type or scale of arts and heritage organisation. Museums, galleries, performing arts organisations, heritage sites, archives, libraries and others are all welcome to join. It is for organisations who may have already started to play with AI tools, or who may just be thinking about it and are ready to find out more. Either is fine so long as they have an open approach that comes from a place of enquiry, with full buy-in from leadership to participate.  

The programme is designed for pairs of participants from each organisation. We have found that two people joining is the best way to effect strategic change and ensure lasting impact for your organisation. 

Ideally, one of the pair could be the digital lead or someone who has responsibility for some or all aspects of digital in the organisation, who could focus on experimenting with an AI tool. The other person could be a senior manager or leader who works in any aspect of the organisation and their focus could be the strategy and governance around AI within the organisation. Through this approach we hope to build a diverse mix of roles and viewpoints in this cohort, whilst keeping each pair rooted in digital.   

The key thing needed is a willingness to question the way you work, a desire to transform the positive impact of your digital activities and approach and the remit to make change happen. 

How is the programme structured?

This was an eight-month programme which ran from April 2025 to December 2025. The fee of £3,000 covered two people from each organisation to participate in 67+ contact hours per organisation across: 

  • Two in-person, full-day workshops, one Thursday 24th April and one Tuesday 18th November 2025 

  • Five participatory online workshops - 2.5 hours each

  • Five bespoke 50-minute mentoring sessions helping each pair of participants to scope, carry out, iterate and evaluate practical, small-scale experiments and to develop any relevant strategic approaches  

  • Access to the Let’s Get Real online community platform Mighty Networks that underpins the programme with workshop resources, further digital resources to support self-led learning and a safe space for conversations

  • Building of connections between a cohort of 40 cultural professionals from 20 organisations 

  • Building connections with subject experts from The Audience Agency, AMA and the Institute for Digital Culture as critical friends and cheerleaders, plus experts in a range of AI applications.

  • Regular, drop-in, online coffee hours for general queries, support requests and a chance to chat with a member of the LGR team and wider cohort

  • Opportunity for additional staff in the participating organisations to access and watch selected workshops and content sessions

  • Your case study and insights showcased in our ‘LGR 12’ report. 

How will my organisation benefit strategically?

Through this collaborative action research, experimentation, workshops and mentoring the programme provides: 

  • High quality professional development. The opportunity for two of your team to collaborate with and learn from a supportive, engaged community of peers with a shared sense of purpose and to develop their digital confidence, skills, literacy and understanding around AI.

  • Mindset development for continued self-learning and innovative practice

  • Tactics for effecting and embedding positive organisational change/transformation and a sustainable self-guided approach to AI

  • Support to reflect on your current practice, design small-scale experiments and explore ways to embed insights and new ways of working back into your organisation

  • Help to become effective and confident agents of change lasting long beyond the programme

  • Evidence and insight that helps you make strategic and practical decisions around thorny challenges such as data security, copyright, ethics and bias

  • The opportunity to develop strategic influence within the wider arts and heritage sector. Your organisation’s experience on the project will inform collaborative research findings to support best practice across the sector. We have trusted relationships with a broad range of cultural stakeholders in the UK and internationally. We will publish the project’s key findings in a final report to be shared and discussed with funders, policymakers, strategic sector bodies and academia.

Where relevant we can also support you to develop a more tangible outcome which, depending on your area of focus, might be one of these: 

  •  Mission-led organisational consensus on your approach to AI
  • A framework for digital activity planning specifically focused on using AI
  • Improved confidence and literacy around data, powered by AI
  •  A framework for digital skills audits with AI at heart
  •  A framework for evidence-led, purposeful decision-making around digital.
  •  Something different, AI-related, that your experimentation leads you to.  

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