Let's Get Real Social Impact + AI: A crowd of people with rainbow coloured glitches over the top and individuals picked out in yellow boxes

Artificial Intelligence has the power to reshape how cultural organisations engage audiences, improve access, and demonstrate social impact. However, without ethical frameworks, operational and skilled use, its adoption risks reinforcing bias, eroding trust and diverting effort away from mission-critical priorities. 

Let’s Get Real: Social Impact + AI is a unique 8-month, cohort learning programme designed to help cultural organisations adopt AI with confidence and integrity. First launched in 2011, Let’s Get Real (LGR) is a proven collaborative action research methodology that has supported 247 participants from cultural organisations to navigate digital change. Each cohort focuses on a specific strategic question and combines small-scale experimentation, peer learning, and expert support to turn insight into lasting organisational change.  

Taking part will help your cultural organisation build clarity, capability and the governance needed to ensure AI strengthens your social mission. Working together and with experts we will consider how AI can meaningfully support your organisation with playfulness, vulnerability and in ways that offer genuine room for innovation. 

Sign up is now open

If your organisation would like take part in LGR: Social Impact + AI, let us know using this form:

Programme theme

Let’s Get Real (LGR) 2026, starting in May, focuses on Social Impact + AI. We will build on the 2025 LGR cohort’s insights, who looked more generally at AI adoption and policy, considering the practice of using AI tools and its strategic implications. This time we will dig deeper into the ways AI can deliver social impact for your organisations.   

Working alongside a supported community of peers and experts, participating organisations will identify where AI can deliver the greatest social value in their context. Their focus might be inclusion, accessibility,  learning, data use, productivity, mitigating bias or something else. We will support the cohort to explore and develop ethical and inclusive approaches, strategies and workflows around AI in their settings. 

Inclusion, accessibility and working with data are just three areas where AI can be used for socially impactful innovation across cultural, health and education sectors, creating positive, measurable change.  Just watch Chris McCausland describing how AI helps him visualise images if you need persuading of the possible benefits.  

However, integrating AI into our services and workflows is fraught with profound ethical concerns and its use risks all sorts of unintended negative consequences.  We need to be sure we use AI technologies in ways that provide genuine value and impact and serve our organisational missions.  

Key to this is taking a human-centric and responsible approach to AI integration that considers emotions, literacies and skills. We will draw on The Audience Agency’s established work in this area, with expert support from our associate, Jocelyn Burnham and partners at the Arts Marketing Association. We will also be steered by UNESCO ‘s recommendations on AI ethics and governance, which focus on human oversight, safety, fairness, and transparency to guide AI development for the betterment of all humanity.    

Participants in the 2026 LGR cohort will be guided and supported to begin this work by planning and carrying out experiments with AI technologies in their own contexts. 

Overview

  • Start 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 

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

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

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

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

  • Support 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

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

  • Sign up opens on 5th March 2026 and the deadline to apply is 30th April 2026 
  • The programme starts on 20th May 2026 and runs until January 2027 
  • Participation costs £3,200 per organisation and covers two people to attend all workshops and support sessions.  A 10% discount is offered to organisations who took part in 2025’s Let’s Get Real: AI 
  • Final Report, with case studies and insights from the programme will be published at our LGR Conference in Spring 2027. 

Being part of the programme was an inspiring mix of strategic thinking and hands-on experimentation, and it was invaluable to meet other organisations navigating similar challenges. We came away with new confidence, useful skills, and a sense of community

London Symphony Orchestra

Upcoming events

Latest report

Have a look at the report from our 2024 cohort: Let's Get Real: Using digital to add value

Participating in the programme has provided a strong foundation for us to kick-start the AI journey within the organisation. It’s also helped shine a light on the importance of the experimental process, especially when talking to stakeholders across the organisation and gaining their confidence in the activities we’re testing.

Royal Academy of Arts

Project Partners

Jocelyn Burnham, our partner in 2025, is coming back to share her expertise again. Jocelyn is one of the UK's leading independent artificial intelligence consultants, trainers, and speakers, specialising in AI innovation through creativity and playfulness. 

Jocelyn Burnham Headshot

The Institute for Digital Culture at the University of Leicester is our long-standing partner, providing access to some of the latest academic AI research and thinking.  

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

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. This programme is best suited to organisations who have already started to play with AI tools, or who may just be thinking about doing so and are ready to find out more. Either is fine so long as you have an open approach that comes from a place of enquiry, with full buy-in from your 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, Inclusion, Access, Education, Social Impact or other related areas 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 will be an eight-month programme which runs from May to Janaury 2027. The fee of £3,200 covers two people from each organisation to participate in: 

  • Two in-person, full-day workshops.

  • Six participatory online workshops - 2-2.5 hours each.

  • Five bespoke 50-minute support sessions helping each pair of participants to scope, carry out, iterate and evaluate practical, small-scale experiments and to develop any tangible outcomes.

  • 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 34 cultural professionals from 17 organisations.

  • Building connections with subject experts from The Audience Agency and the Institute for Digital Culture as critical friends and cheerleaders, plus Jocelyn Burnham and others.

  • 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 2027 LGR published report with some presented at the conference in spring 2027. 

How will my organisation benefit strategically?

For the £3,200 investment, organisations gain structured support to test real applications of AI that could improve inclusion, access or impact, whilst considering staff time, skills and feelings, reducing risk and potentially strengthening evidence for funders. Instead of learning in isolation or reacting to rapid change, participants are taken through a supported process that delivers practical outcomes, shared learning and long-term organisational confidence in how AI is used for social good. 

Through collaborative action learning, research, workshops and support session 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.

  • Tactics for effecting and embedding positive organisational change 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.

Will there be any tangible outputs from my organisation's experiments?

The individual experiment you will be supported to carry out could result in a tangible output which, depending on your area of focus, might be one of these: 

  • Workflows to mitigate and reduce AI bias  
  • Methods to make any AI use as inclusive as possible 
  • Methods to evaluate the use of AI  
  • 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 the heart 
  •  A framework for evidence-led, purposeful decision-making around AI. 

Workshop dates and structure

Both participants are expected to attend all of the workshops and support sessions so please make a note of these dates and your check availability:  

Programme introduction: Online, Wednesday 20th May - 2pm - 3:30pm

Workshop one:  Face to face, location London venue TBC, Wednesday 27th May 10am - 4:30pm 

Workshop two:  Online, Wednesday 10th June  - 2pm - 4:30pm

Workshop three: Online, Tuesday 23rd June - 2pm - 4:30pm

#1 Support Session: w/c 29th June 

Workshop four: Online, Wednesday 8th July - 2pm - 4:30pm

#2 Support Session:  w/c 13th July / 20th July 

Experimentation - begins July and carries on until November 

Workshop five: Online, Wednesday 16th September - 2pm - 4:30pm

#3 Support Session w/c Sept 28th 

Workshop six: Online, Wednesday 21st October - 2pm - 4:30pm

#4 Support Session w/c 2nd November 

Workshop seven: Face to face, London TBC, Wednesday 18th November, 10am - 4:30pm 

#5 legacy support Session:  w/c 7th December 

Register your interest in taking part

Let’s Get Real is an essential undertaking before taking a big organisational leap into the future - whether that’s data, digital or something still to come, It will prepare you for all the knowledge and learning you’ll need without steering you to a pre-determined conclusion

The Queens Hall Edinburgh

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