The Bristol Digital Futures Institute is organising a two-part sandpit event on the
19th and 29th October. We'll focus on community-led approaches for building technologies in response to local needs, with a view to supporting sustainable, equitable digital futures. Supported by EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) funding, the event has the following goals:

• make connections between different sector/disciplinary partners;
• identify ‘lessons learned’ from previous community technology projects;
• set a collective agenda and principles for building participatory digital futures;
• identify opportunities to translate our shared knowledge into impact; and
• support participants to access funding to take these ideas forward.

c.£11k will be made available to support impact-generating ideas and projects arising from this sandpit, to be spent by 31st March 2022.

Register here

Bristol has a long history of innovative grassroots and cross-sector collaboration around pressing issues related to local future-making. Many of these collaborations have provided guiding principles for creating community-led technologies within different sectors and disciplines.

The pandemic has highlighted a need for continued engagement with how these participatory methods work in practice. Here we ask: What participatory approaches have worked for community technology projects, and what are the implications for digital ‘futures in the making’?

Day 1: Tuesday 19th October, 9.45 am – 12.30 pm

• Welcome, goal setting and introductions
• Making connections
• Provocations: How can we build digital futures together? Perspectives from community, business and academia.
• Workshop: A forward agenda for participatory digital futures

Day 2: Friday 29th October, 9.45 am – 12.30 pm

• Identifying opportunities for impact
• Introduction to funding opportunity
• Workshop: Crafting collaborative projects.