Additional information for Clever Together's proposal to the
European Artificial Intelligence & Society Fund

Our relevant experience

The South West London Integrated Care System was formed to tackle inequality in care and to help better use the £3billion per year spent across the region on healthcare. They turned to Clever Together for two goals: (i) to co-create an understanding of social mobility in a way that will inspire all the health and care organisation to play their part and (ii) to help shift the culture of the central team of 500 leaders. With a blend of physical and digital crowdsourcing and co-creation events, we delivered insight that’s led to new strategy, shifts in resource allocation and the development of an inclusive leaders’ programme that’s opening door for people who would have previously been excluded from the sector’s senior roles.

Working with the Exec and Board of the £660m per annum regional mental health care provider, Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Trust, we created Safe Spaces to listen to the hopes, fears and needs of 4,000+ colleagues and service users. We designed a programme to bring their voices and lived experience to the centre of culture change and a movement of shared truth and reconciliation. Doing so, with humility and listening in new ways, has helped to stop the decline of the Trust. It now has the fastest improving staff and service user satisfaction scores in the nation.

For the past three years, we have closely supported the development and operationalisation of Mars Inc.’s global AI governance, covering 160,000 employees. We work closely with the company’s AI governance lead in building a community of practice internally as well as designing and delivering regular meetings of the company’s most senior leaders to learn about, discuss, and co-design their developing approach to AI governance.

To inform the next iteration of Europe’s digital advertising self-regulatory framework, we designed, developed and delivered the award-winning Your Online Voices citizen engagement. To ensure proper consideration of citizens’ needs and expectations, we created, moderated, facilitated, and analysed a bespoke, European-wide, bilingual conversation. The insights gathered from the more than 3,000 contributors will help create an improved, consumer-focused advertising experience in Europe. Find out more at: https://edaa.eu/your-online-voices-your-voice-your-choice/

Dr. Peter Thomond is the co-founder and Lidia Velkova is the previous Strategy Director of the national UK charity SportInspired. Our work has involved place-based community development, building networks of community organisations across the UK to create grassroots-led impact, while forming partnerships with central and local government and leading corporations to secure funding. Over the course of our work there, we prepared, hosted, and facilitated Trustee meetings, as well as numerous large-scale events, each attended by 200+ children, local community representatives, and dozens of corporate volunteers, achieving lasting impact for more than 80,000 beneficiaries.

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Our team supported the lead of the World Economic Forum’s Global Plastic Action Partnership at the time of its formation and initial strategy development to identify member organizations, build the Partnership’s global network, and develop a structure and ways of working, streamlining member contributions into effective workstreams. We supported the preparation, delivery, and follow-up of Partnership meetings, ensuring that time spent by members was productive, in line with an overall strategy for impact, and measurably contributed to the Partnership’s ambitious objectives.

In 2024, our team coordinated a group of 9 universities, national standardisation bodies, and research organisations to begin the formation of a community of practice on human-centric digitalisation in Europe and Canada. The still ongoing initiative focuses on specific problem verticals such as AI adoption & AI at work, gender equity in ICT, basic digital skills, uniform connectivity, and public services digitalisation. The community has already gathered dozens of experts, representing 10 countries, and 6 stakeholder groups. Find out more at: https://www.nexusia.org/.

Our Safe Spaces methodology

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How our Safe Spaces work

Our Safe Spaces methodology is designed for large-scale qualitative and/or quantitative co-creation and collaboration spanning up to 1,000s of participants.

Why Safe Spaces work

Most online discourse is shaped by attention and status.

Safe Spaces help people work together, build consensus, and find positive ways to move forward.

We have successfully used Safe Spaces to support online and in-person, event-based co-creation.

Psychological safety

We incentivise contributions driven by purpose, not status and make it safe for people to say what they really think.

Wisdom of crowds

Cooperation is one of humanity’s defining features. We nurture it and harness it towards positive, specific aims.

Human analysis

We love AI and use it where we can, but a true understanding of human experience requires human analysis.

Active facilitation

We structure and facilitate our conversations to ensure they stay on track towards the desired objectives.

Fit for purpose platform

We’ve tried many platforms, taken what worked, discarded what didn’t, and built our own, tailored to the needs of our clients.

Our Discussions methodology

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How our Discussions work

Our Discussions methodology comprises of coordinated local-level, group-based qualitative engagements led by own community representatives.

Why Discussions work

Many insight generation activities are expert-driven and reinforce hierarchies of expertise.

Discussions aim to break down barriers to accessibility of deliberative processes and give control to communities to shape their engagements. We do this by adhering to five principles.

Training and capacity building

We help Discussion Leaders and Discussion Observers implement successful engagements by providing tailored resources, training, and guides.

Lowered barriers to participation

We practice considerate, human-validated application of AI to provide ongoing summaries of insights to open entry points.

Transparency and ethical alignment

Discussions are transparent to all parties and comply with ethical principles such as safety, inclusivity and diversity, and privacy and data protection.

Freedom within a framework

We give freedom to tailor Discussions to the needs of specific communities, while providing continuous structured support.

Good governance

Discussions include close adherence to applicable laws, regulations, and guidelines such as the GDPR, the EU AI Act, and human rights laws.

Our Platform

A bespoke, highly customisable platform, tailored to enable safe, impactful engagements

Our platform is:

  • A single digital destination for change campaigns, able to promote key messages, educate audiences, and engage people.

  • A visible asset to demonstrate the commitment to transparency, accountability and co-creation that our stakeholders make.

  • Independent, where people can say what they truly think, without fear it will be used against them.

At its heart, our platform simply enables people to:

  • Respond in free text to one or more open-ended questions.
  • See and comment upon the ideas of others to develop them and build consensus.
  • Vote on submitted ideas to collectively prioritise the best.
  • Participate in engagements in real time.

To truly enable meaningful engagements, our platform:

  • Is highly customisable to match the brand and engagement needs of the campaign.
  • Includes powerful survey functionality to enable quantitative exploration in addition to deliberative engagements.
  • Is fully responsive for the many who want to use it on the move.