We are excited to commission approximately seven UK-based creatives to develop artefacts and interventions in any media that explore Responsible AI in practice. The commissions will be presented as part of the Edinburgh Festivals in August 2027.

We’re calling this series of commissions A Promise in Return. The title draws on the history of the word ‘responsibility’. If we take the word back to its roots, the idea of being responsible is not merely to carry a burden, but to enter into a relationship, to recognise that the world addresses us and that we answer through our actions.

In Latin spondere means to pledge, to vow, to promise; it’s associated with performing rites and making offerings. Respondere (to respond) is to make a counter-promise; something is offered, something is pledged in return. To be responsible, then, is to be relational. To pay attention to what is being promised to you and what you are promising in return.

Alongside terms like Ethical AI, Trustworthy AI, AI for Good and Human-Centred AI, the term Responsible AI is often used when implementing how AI technologies are deployed and used in trade and commerce, and in business processes and operations.

Yet for the term to resonate and ground our everyday practices and modes of exchange, Responsible AI must also be about recognising the vows we make to one another, to places, to shared values, to moments in time, to the past and future, when we engage with the world via AI technologies.

This commission invites you to explore your response to this prompt as a creative act. Storytelling may involve elements of autobiographical, biographical or entirely fictive scenarios and personas. We invite commissioned works that are driven by curiosity and engage with character, people, places, histories, occupations, technologies, environments, the present day and/or immediate futures in ways that are thoughtful, critical, generous, challenging and unexpected.

We are interested in commissions that demonstrate what it means to respond and to make visible the conversations, commitments, and promises that shape our shared world, for good or ill, in the age of AI. All that is needed is a clear engagement with the term Responsible AI whether or not AI technology is used in the commission process.

For example, AI literacy is a promise of sorts. It promises to equip the public and end-users with the skills to engage with AI technologies competently and confidently so as to contribute to the economy. ‘A Promise in Return’ shifts this focus beyond a narrow economic lens towards responsible use and suggests that understanding AI well means understanding what we owe each other and our surroundings when we build, deploy, govern or use it. AI literacy, then, is not just about end-users but should bring to light the promises that developers, deployers, and institutions make (and should be held to) as renewed forms of social contracts and social licenses emerge.

By exploring the theme ‘A Promise in Return,’ the aim of these commissions is to:

1. encourage creatives to reflect deeply with what it means to engage with AI technologies;
2. demonstrate how creative work can inform and reframe Responsible AI tools, methods or approaches in new and engaging ways; and/or
3. inspire and empower members of the public to better understand, engage with, respond to and inform Responsible AI development.

We seek to commission a wide variety of creative practitioners, makers, artists and craftspeople, including writers, graphic designers and illustrators, architects and urban developers, conservationists, musicians, theatrical performers, dancers, visual artists and designers. We look to commission a variety of artefacts and interventions in any media, digital or analogue, including text and image, sculpture and installation, photography, film and performance.

The focus of these commissions is not on the technology itself but on the ability of creatives to communicate through their practice something important about Responsible AI. It’s the message not the medium that we care about. Potential themes might include: 

• imagining more responsible current and near future uses of AI; 
• inspiring new forms of collective action and activism within the Responsible AI ecosystem; 
• exploring the incentives (e.g. economic, social, political, environmental) that exist within the AI ecosystem and possible alternatives; 
• celebrating what the Arts and Humanities can offer the Responsible AI ecosystem. 

We want to bring to life your ideas for creative projects that take a variety of imaginative approaches to Responsible AI futures – from playful and optimistic to purposefully challenging and critical. We are after proposals that are ambitious in their intentions and realisable within the scope of the funding and timescales outlined below.   

The commissions will be exhibited during the Edinburgh Art Festival in August 2027 with further display opportunities at other BRAID related exhibitions and events through to 2028.  They will be presented in association with Inspace, the Institute for Design Informatics, and the Edinburgh Futures Institute. 

About the programme

BRAID works to enable the Arts and Humanities to enhance the development and uptake of Responsible AI in the UK. We want to empower the Responsible AI community in the UK to maximise the benefits and minimise the risks that AI poses to our society and the environment. At a time when the use of AI is spreading at scale and at speed, this requires:

• the building of public awareness, capability and confidence to engage and inform Responsible AI, giving voice to individuals and groups that are currently underrepresented and disempowered;
• identifying and breaking down the structural barriers and divides that currently stand in the way of a healthy, connected and flourishing Responsible AI ecosystem; and
• improving or reimagining the ways we deliver Responsible AI, centring notions of accountability, sustainability, answerability, resistance and public recourse.

We have developed the following series of overarching workstreams to create coherence and purpose across the BRAID programme and delivery on our objectives. We encourage applicants to address one or more of these themes in your proposals:

• Community and capability
• Recourse and repair
• Public media and democracy

Creative practitioners can provide necessary, vibrant, imaginative and creative visions for Responsible AI that can help us to meet the above challenges.

Selected artists will receive: 

A budget of between £8,000 and £12,000 that includes all items of expenditure. This means that all costs associated with the project – artists fees, collaborator fees, materials, equipment and fabrication costs, artwork transportation costs (including delivery and collection from exhibition space), taxes including VAT etc. – must be included in this budget. 

Please note: 

Your artist fee should include time for your participation in one talk or panel discussion as part of the public programming for the exhibition. You will also be required to attend a community gathering event in June 2026 in Newcastle to showcase works in progress, as well as attend Edinburgh in August 2027 for installation and the exhibition opening. 

Please request the amount that reflects the realistic cost of delivering the commission as the selection panel will assess your capacity to deliver within the budget requested, not simply the scale or ambition of the proposal.  

• Curatorial and practical support (e.g. venue related technical support), to present, display and make accessible your commission within the wider Responsible AI ecosystem for the exhibition audience. 
• Opportunities to engage with the BRAID team and network to develop your ideas and foster knowledge exchange and co-learning. 
• Opportunities to promote the commission in our newsletter and across our online communication channels, including introductions to relevant organisations or practitioners or researchers in our community where helpful to strengthen your commission. 
• Space to exhibit a work-in progress at a major BRAID community building event to be held in Newcastle in June 2027 and space to exhibit final commission in Edinburgh as part of the 2027 Edinburgh Summer Festivals. 
• Selected artists may also be invited to submit images of the commission under a Creative Commons 4.0 licence to the Better Images of AI library.  
• A bursary of £750 to cover limited travel and accommodation to support the  artist when it comes to installing the artwork and attending the exhibition opening. 
• Funding from our additional needs budget (see more under who can apply). 

The budget is inclusive of VAT. Commissioned practitioners remain solely responsible for their own tax affairs, including declaring income to HMRC and accounting for VAT if VAT registered.  

Applications can be submitted either in writing or by a video recording.

If applying in writing, submissions must be made through the online application form. We recommend first drafting your application offline using the Word version here. When finalised, simply enter the information into the online form. Please contact braid@ed.ac.uk if you require the offline form in another format.

If applying by video, submissions must be made using the online application form (video). You will be asked to provide a URL to a short video uploaded onto either YouTube or Vimeo (8 minutes max.) that:

1. introduces your work and practice to us
2. describes your idea for the commission and how it responds to the open call
3. shares with us the relevant experience, skills and resources you have in place to deliver the proposed artwork on time and within budget
4. outlines how you would like to engage with the BRAID team, researchers and community during the commissioning process

Supporting material 

In addition to the application, applicants must also email to us the following documents as a single PDF attachment:

1. Portfolio (10MB max.) that includes details of 3 previous artworks with text descriptions for each (100 words max.) along with either images (6 max. overall) or for moving image and sound works links to YouTube, Vimeo or Soundcloud files (5 minutes max. overall).
2. CV (2 A4 pages max., can be in narrative form)
3. Budget You can access a budget template in Word here. Please contact us if you require the budget form in another format.

Additional material 

1. Access rider (optional) If there are certain access needs that you would like BRAID to be aware of when connecting and working with you, please feel free to submit an Access Rider using the online access rider. Please contact braid@ed.ac.uk if you require this document in another format. See Access Docs for Artists for more details.
2. Equality monitoring form (optional) –We also invite all applicants to complete an online equality monitoring form, which helps BRAID to understand the people, regions and communities that are connecting with us and the places and people that are currently missing from our network.

All supporting material must be received by 17.00 GMT on Monday, 2 November 2026. We are unable to accept late submissions on this occasion.

Your submission will be considered by a panel of creative professionals, academics and members of the BRAID team as well as representatives from our advisory board and programme partners the Ada Lovelace Institute and BBC. 

Panelists who are involved in any application or otherwise have a conflict of interest will be required to declare the conflict and will be recused from decision-making. 

When selecting commissions, the panel will initial check to ensure eligibility requirements are met, that you have demonstrated a credible capacity to deliver the proposed commission on time and within budget, given the skills, resources and needs of the project, and that your proposal does not raise unresolved ethical, data protection or consent concerns. Applications that meet these requirements will then be ranked against the following criteria: 

• the strength of vision relating to Responsible AI behind the commission, how it engages with the themes of the call around responsibility in terms of promises made and owed and, where your process involves the use of AI tools, how responsibly you have approached this. Note that this is not an academic exercise: plan, direct descriptions of your ideas are just as welcome as any conceptually or philosophically framed ones;
• the strength of the imaginative dimensions, originality and potential reach of the commission, including how the commission speaks to and engages public audiences beyond the Responsible AI research community as well as connects with BRAID’s ambition to strengthen the Responsible AI community  

Once applications are ranked against these criteria, the panel will also look at the shortlist as a whole, to help ensure the final group of commissions is able to form a cohesive exhibition reflecting a range of media, disciplines and career stages. 

The panel will base their decision on submitted material only. It is important that the material submitted is of a quality that best demonstrates your vision and aims. Given the volume of applications we typically receive, we regret that we will not be able to offer individual feedback on unsuccessful applications.  

AI (artificial intelligence) describes computer systems that perform tasks typically thought to require a level of intelligence. For example, prediction and decision-making, speech recognition and translation, and the generation of content like text, images, music and videos. Most systems on the market today use a form of machine learning. This is a technique that enables algorithms (human-designed software instructions) to systematically model and use patterns found in data that has been provided by humans. It is these mathematical patterns and relationships within datasets that enable machine learning models to perform many tasks that previously required human intelligence.

BRAID defines Responsible AI as AI technologies being transparent, fair, accountable and beneficial to people and the environment. It includes an interdisciplinary field of research, a corporate governance agenda, a designed standard of AI products, and a broad ecosystem of stakeholders that continue to shape what “responsible” means in practice.

The AI ecosystem is broadly construed to include all the places, groups and communities involved in, or substantially impacted by, the development, use and governance of AI technologies.

BRAID is committed to equality of opportunity. We seek to locate and amplify under-represented voices and perspectives on responsible AI and work to promote a positive culture, one that celebrates difference, challenges prejudice and ensures fairness and respect.  

We have a dedicated fund designed to support access needs relating to personal circumstances, such as caring responsibilities and/or health related conditions. This funding is separate from the creative commissions budget, and requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis.  

If you have access needs and wish to discuss how the programme can support, please contact our programme manager Tina Donnelly (tina.donnelly@ed.ac.uk). 

To ensure we are aware of and responsive to the access needs of selected creative practitioners, all applicants are also invited to submit an access rider when applying. See Access Docs for Artists for more details.  

We will continue updating this page throughout so please check back.

Is BRAID looking for existing works or proposals for new ones?  

We are looking for new commissions that directly respond to the open call. 

Is there a limit of one application per person?  

We expect to receive just one application per person. However, if you are a solo practitioner as well as part of a group or if you are part of more than one collective, we will consider applications from you as a solo practitioner as well as applications that include you as a co-collaborator. 

Is a research-based practice required? 

While the commission is open to all creatives and is not research led, the opportunity would suit creatives wanting to: 

1. actively interact with our community of researchers and stakeholders; and 
2. broaden their practice by engaging both critically and curiously with the field of Responsible AI.  

Practitioners will be invited to meet with members of our team and researchers throughout the commissioning process. We encourage applicants to think about how they might engage with the BRAID community when preparing proposals. You can see a list of currently funded projects here.  

Do I need an academic or research background to apply? 

No. The title A Promise in Return draws on the history of the word ‘responsibility’ to explain our thematic approach but your application doesn’t need to engage with philosophy, theory or the history of the word at all. Plain, direct descriptions of your idea are just as welcome as more conceptually framed approached. The opportunity is open to artisans, craftspeople and creative practitioners of every kind and the panel is looking for strength of vision not an academic background.  

Can I use AI tools to help write my application 

You’re welcome to use AI tools to help draft your application, but you remain fully responsible for what is submitted. We encourage you to use the tool as an aide and not a replacement for drafting. Make sure the submission reflects a true, original and deliverable idea of your own, rather than something generic that could equally have come from anyone else. We also encourage you to check the tool’s terms of service when it comes to data protection and avoid entering personal or sensitive information into systems that may retain it for their own purposes. 

Do I need to be an expert in using AI tools? 

We encourage creative practitioners working in any medium to apply and are interested in a diversity of approaches. All that is needed is a clear interest in artistically engaging with Responsible AI. There is no expectation that AI technology will be used to create the artwork, nor will preference be given to submissions proposing to employ AI technology.  

Having engaged with practitioners across the UK, we are aware of both a desire among some creatives to employ AI technologies in their practice, and for others, a wish to push back against this trend.  

When selecting works, we will be assessing applications in terms of what the artwork is able to communicate when it comes to matters of Responsible AI, rather than the technology that is used along the way. While commissions driven by new AI technologies are welcome, we also wish to invite applicants to think more broadly about the ways that digital and analogue media might interact in insightful ways.  

Are there any restrictions on the mediums for submissions?  

We are open to all media. If performance, please ensure that the performance piece is clearly described and budgetary matters well thought through. The only restrictions would be on materials that posed health and safety risks or presented harmful or illegal content.   

Is this opportunity available for students?  

The opportunity is not available for students enrolled in full-time formal undergraduate or taught postgraduate studies. Those on PhD programmes are eligible to apply so long as they are also registered as a self-employed freelancer and can demonstrate their capacity to undertake the commission alongside study commitments. 

Who owns the IP in the commission?  

You will retain your IP in the commission. However, as a publicly funded project, the University of Edinburgh will need to document the commission and make use of material for programme related activities.  

These arrangements will be detailed in an agreement entered between the University and successful applicants prior to the project commencing. If the programme wishes to re-exhibit the commission at BRAID related events through to 2028, we will enter into further arrangements with artists as those opportunities arise. 

Commissioned practitioners will need to grant the University of Edinburgh a licence to use images and documentation of your commission for non commercial impact, publicity, evaluation and reporting, archiving and teaching purposes. You will need to acknowledge BRAID and AHRC funding in all public communications about the commission and whenever the work is publicly attributed.