Newspeak House is an independent residential college founded in 2015 to study, nurture and inspire emerging communities of practice across civil society and the public sector in the UK. more...
Study with us
Applications for our year-long flagship course Introduction to Political Technology are now open!
This year, in addition to the six residential places, we are pleased to offer six non-residential places on the course.
Course participants spend a year immersed in a wide range of communities working to change society with technology, everything from civil servants, activists, charities, journalists, to researchers.
The course is designed to support mid-career technologists to develop a holistic understanding of the civic landscape in the UK, in order to found groundbreaking new projects or seek strategic positions in key institutions.
The course has run since 2015 and has graduated 76 fellows. 2024-25 is the second year in which the course will include content led by Newspeak House’s faculty, a group with broad experience in branches of political technology practice and theory including political organising, collective behaviour, open source software, and game design.
The course entails a commitment of approximately 16 hours per week and is designed to fit around a day job.
Events
-31d91b5eeaca31ebe4bb1764864ec0b939f2ae7ce37c4d28d542260d26d0dd02.jpg){kind=spacer}
As part of our research we offer our spaces for civic communities of practice to convene. Since opening in 2015 we have hosted over a thousand events, including lectures, meetups, hackathons, conferences, unconferences, workshops, roundtables, screenings, fundraisers, launches, and exhibitions.
Subscribe to our Event Calendar
If you’d like to host an event in our space, you can hire it outright, or if you’re convening a civic community of practice do get in touch ([email protected]) to see if it could fit into our programme.
What's On
Edward Saperia
Each week the college hosts a community dinner called Ration Club. It's open to anyone who'd like to find out more about the college and its work. To find out more or if you'd like to attend, please register.
Register ↗A monthly London-based meetup for members of the rationalist diaspora. The diaspora includes, but is not limited to, LessWrong, Astral Codex Ten, rationalist tumblrsphere, and parts of the Effective Altruism movement.
You don’t have to identify as a rationalist to attend: basically, if you think we seem like interesting people you’d like to hang out with, welcome! You are invited. You do not need to think you are clever enough, or interesting enough, or similar enough to the rest of us, to attend. You are invited.
Our reading list for this time is:
- An Alien God (https://www.readthesequences.com/An-Alien-God)
- On Puberty, Identity, and Sex (https://homosabiens.substack.com/p/on-puberty-identity-and-sex)
We’ll start to discuss these around 3. If you have articles you want to suggest for future readings, you can do that at https://redd.it/v3646u.
Register ↗Interested in understanding the differences between the various ways open source (and non-open-source) software is licensed? Great! Come to this event!
There has recently (eg. Elasticsearch and Redis cases) been a resurgence of discussion on how we license and how we can fairly license software we create — which is people’s work.
We’ll talk about the cases of Elasticsearch and Redis but also we’ll explore the history of licenses and compare the most popular licenses, eg. MIT, Apache, GPL family, et al.
Come to learn and reflect, to think and discuss!
- 6:30 Hellos
- 7:00 Presentation
- 7:30 Q&A and Discussion
- 8:30 Goodbyes
Join us for a bi-weekly Campaign Lab Hack Night - a regular session to work on your tech side projects to help the progressive left campaign more effectively. You can either bring your own project or help out on one of our ongoing ones.
Snacks and drinks provided, all you need is to bring yourself and a laptop!
All technologists, activists, organisers and campaigners, are welcome. We also welcome any new people who are interested in politics and technology and evidence based campaign innovation on the left. Everyone welcome!
You can join us remotely at this link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82959644687?pwd=cG9BdEFha3dmNzVjcFd2RUFTWGVNZz09
What is Campaign Lab?
Campaign Lab is a community of politically-minded progressive data scientists, researchers and activists who are working together to build new election tools and change the way we analyse and understand political election campaigning.
Any questions, thoughts or ideas - do get in touch and say hi! [email protected]
Register ↗Join us for an evening of semi-organised discussion around the present and future of AI in Government, hosted by Evidence House, the No10 Data Science team, the Civic AI Observatory, and the Incubator for AI.
Open to existing civil servants and anyone with an interest in AI for good in government and beyond, we’ll look at recent example of how government has made use of AI, through the Evidence House community and beyond.
Then, in a semi-facilitated “unconference”, we’ll think about the future, and where government AI goes from here!
To ensure a broad mix of participants and facilitate meaningful discussion, we’ll confirm your place in the run-up to the event - especially if you’re from outside government, make sure to tell us your affiliation and why you care about government AI for good when you sign-up! If you’re not sure, reach out to the organisers.
About the Incubator for AI: The Government is establishing an elite team of highly empowered technical experts at the heart of government. Their mission is to help departments harness the potential of AI to improve lives and the delivery of public services.
About the Civic AI Observatory: The Civic AI Observatory is an initiative by Nesta and Newspeak House to support civic organisations’ plans and adapt to the rapidly evolving field of Generative AI. We focus on immediate practical insights on AI for digital leads – case studies of civic applications, examples of digital strategies and organisational policies, and the impact on the job market – as well as developing communities of practice for specific domains.
About Evidence House: Evidence House is a Downing Street-led initiative, working with collaborators including ONS Data Science Campus, Evaluation Task Force, and National Situation Centre. It aims up-skill civil servants in technical skills whilst spinning out innovative solutions to government priority issues.
Register ↗In this session, we’ll look at what makes an effective political system. From feudalism and authoritarianism to direct and representative democracy.
Participants are invited to bring their own ideas as to how society should be organised and we’ll discuss the virtues and failings of each.
This event takes as its premise the evident failure of our political system. We’ve inherited a medieval democracy, too inefficient and corrupt to organise our complex reality. Bound by bureaucracy, we don’t build anything, or believe anything. We squander our collective potential and look to the gutter, not the stars.
What will succeed this failed state?
Register ↗Election technologies have had their first big test of 2024: the local elections.
What did we learn? What do we need to build for the upcoming general election?
Lightning talks followed by an unconference.
This event is brought to you by The Election Tech Handbook, a collectively-made and maintained resource for technologists, designers and campaigners working on projects around the upcoming UK General Election 2024.
Register ↗This pre-EAG London event is aiming to connect people from different sectors, share ideas on neglected paths to impact and get a sense of what other organisations’ plans are.
We’re hoping to have people from foundations, development finance, thinktanks, government, academia and impactful for profits.
This event is more focused on the the idea generation/lobbying and funding sides rather than the implementation side.
Schedule
- 13:00: Welcome/mixing
- 13.30: Lightning Talks
- 15:00: Networking, space for 1-1s
- 16:00 onwards: Some people may head to EAG London, others may stick around at a nearby pub to keep on chatting.
Speakers
- Rossa O’Keeffe-O’Donovan: Open Philanthropy
- Saloni Dattani: Our World in Data/Works in Progress
- Eirik Mofoss: Center for Long Term Policy
- Marcus Davis: Rethink Priorities
- Center for Global Development
- International Finance Corporation (TBC)
- University of Chicago (TBC)
- Founders Pledge (TBC)
If you’re interested in discussing EA global development ecosystem strategies as well, you are welcome to join from 11am.
Register ↗Would you like to participate in the AI, Animals, and Digital Minds Conference sort of in person?
Join others at Newspeak House for a livestreaming of the conference and stay for dinner with the in-person attendees who will come over an join around 7pm.
- 10:00 - 10:30: Arrival
- 10:30 - 10:45: Welcome and Introduction
- 12:15 - 13:15: Lunch on your own
- 19:00 - 21:00: Dinner provided and casual networking
See speaker information.
Drinks and food will not be provided until dinner. There are many restaurants and shops in walking distance.
This will be followed by a retreat the following 2 days at Newspeak House.
Interested in getting more involved with the animal advocacy movement? Join the Hive Slack.
Register ↗Network with others who are interested in advancing the field of how to steer AI to benefit Animals and Digital Minds.
Join us at Newspeak House for 2 days of an unconference. Participants will be able to create their own topics of discussion or do freeform networking throughout the event.
Many of the speakers from the conference the day before will be in attendance to further discuss their work.
Light drinks and snacks will be provided throughout the day. There are many restaurants and shops in walking distance for meals.
See the more detailed guide here.
Interested in getting more involved with the animal advocacy movement? Join the Hive Slack.
Register ↗Join us for an evening of semi-organised discussion around the present and future of AI in Government, hosted by Evidence House, the No10 Data Science team, the Civic AI Observatory, and the Incubator for AI.
Open to existing civil servants and anyone with an interest in AI for good in government and beyond, we’ll look at recent example of how government has made use of AI, through the Evidence House community and beyond.
Then, in a semi-facilitated “unconference”, we’ll think about the future, and where government AI goes from here!
To ensure a broad mix of participants and facilitate meaningful discussion, we’ll confirm your place in the run-up to the event - especially if you’re from outside government, make sure to tell us your affiliation and why you care about government AI for good when you sign-up! If you’re not sure, reach out to the organisers.
About the Incubator for AI: The Government is establishing an elite team of highly empowered technical experts at the heart of government. Their mission is to help departments harness the potential of AI to improve lives and the delivery of public services.
About the Civic AI Observatory: The Civic AI Observatory is an initiative by Nesta and Newspeak House to support civic organisations’ plans and adapt to the rapidly evolving field of Generative AI. We focus on immediate practical insights on AI for digital leads – case studies of civic applications, examples of digital strategies and organisational policies, and the impact on the job market – as well as developing communities of practice for specific domains.
About Evidence House: Evidence House is a Downing Street-led initiative, working with collaborators including ONS Data Science Campus, Evaluation Task Force, and National Situation Centre. It aims up-skill civil servants in technical skills whilst spinning out innovative solutions to government priority issues.
Register ↗