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.

​Join us for a relaxed salon/seminar on the future politics of AI. To spark discussion, I’ll share some ideas and thoughts from an article I’m writing on the subject, but I’m hoping to see some spirited debate.

​Joshua Tan is a mathematician / computer scientist doing research on the intersections between artificial and collective intelligence. Founder and research lead at Metagov, advocate for Public AI, lead at DAOstar, and more.

This session is open to the public, however spaces are limited. Registration includes a suggested contribution towards Jethro’s time. Free for fellowship candidates.

A workshop to get beginners coding with AI tools in an afternoon.

​By the end, you’ll be able to:

• Host your own website with access to a database and chat feature
• Analyse data and produce beautiful charts

​The workshop is led by Newspeak House Fellow Jethro Reeve. He started using AI to code in October 2023, building tools for campaignlab.uk. He’s now a full-time software developer at coefficient.ai.

​Newspeak House is delighted to host the Civic Tech Field Guide, the largest global directory of civic tech projects, on a special field trip to London.

​For one day only, the guide will turn its attention to the capital, working with local practitioners, researchers, and organisers to map the landscape of technology projects that shape the city.

​The day will be led by Matt Stempeck, the guide’s founder and curator. Matt will introduce the project, share the latest updates from around the globe, and present insights from his recent research.

​Together we will:

• ​explore, discover, and catalogue the projects, organisations, and tools that make London distinctive
• ​dive into a trove of open data on London and UK civic tech
• ​build a page for London in the guide

​The workshop is free, collaborative, and open to anyone with an interest in civic tech, public-interest technology, digital participation, or social impact. Researchers, activists, technologists, policymakers – or the merely curious – are all welcome.

Part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty, fellows, and fellowship candidates.

​A space to make computer things with other people. Beginners, dabblers, and pros are all welcome. Explore, tinker, and share what you’re learning.

​Whether no-code, low-code, vibe-code, or trad-code — whatever you’re into, bring it along.

​Drawing room: Co-working and peer learning, work on your own projects, pick up ideas from others, or try out one of the many resources and suggestions floating around.

​Classroom: Workshops tbc - let Ed know if you want to run one.

Hi - this is an event by Orta Therox and Peter Steinberger. Two well respected technologists who have a strong appreciation for using Claude Code as a tool for writing production-grade software. We’re not associated with Anthropic.

​We wanted to create a space for people to be able to talk through their experiences, and understand that for some it’s hard to speak publicly about using AI / LLM tooling. Talks are not recorded, nor is there a live-stream.

This meetup will be structured as a series of lightning talks, 5-15m long with talks which start along the lines of: “I was X when Claude Code Y”

​So, “I was impressed when Claude Code figured out a bug I had been…”, “I was disappointed when Claude Code deleted my production database” etc.

​We’re looking for grounded talks about the trade-offs, places where you’ve seen usage thrive, ways you’ve helped others use it, insights from unexpected outcomes and how it has changed your perspective.

​The timing plan:

• 19:00 - People arrive
• 19:30 - Intro, COC, and talks
• 20:30 - We wrap up talks, open chat
• 22:00 - We get kicked out

This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​Evaluation is more than a technical exercise: it emerged as a way to discipline decision-making, to separate activity from real outcomes. Yet even strong evidence does not guarantee that organisations will act on it — and poorly designed evaluations risk measuring the wrong thing altogether.

​This session examines the principles of rigorous evaluation, why evidence often fails to influence practice, and how to design assessments that withstand scrutiny and drive real change.

• What is evaluation, and why does it matter?
• What does “good” vs. “bad” evaluation look like?
• How do you decide when to do experiments?
• How has evaluation been applied in political and civic technology?

​Andreas Varotsis is a data scientist and AI engineer who works to improve operational delivery and services across government using technology, data, and evidence. He’s spent the previous decade in various roles in central government and front-line delivery, including the Metropolitan Police Service, the data-science team of 10 Downing Street, and the Incubator for AI.

​He works to support a range of cross-government communities, including Evidence House, which works to improve the use of data and IT in government, and the Society of Evidence Based Policing, which champions research to enhance policing practices and reduce crime.

Sources of Social Power is the magnum opus of Michael Mann, a professor in Sociology at University of California.

Mann identifies the four principal ‘sources’ of power as being control over economic, ideological, military, and political resources. He examines the interrelations between these in a narrative history of power from Neolithic times, through ancient Near Eastern civilisations, the classical Mediterranean age, and medieval Europe, up to just before the Industrial Revolution in England. Rejecting the conventional monolithic concept of a ‘society’, Dr. Mann’s model is instead one of a series of overlapping, intersecting power networks. He makes this model operational by focusing on the logistics of power - how the flow of information, manpower, and goods is controlled over social and geographical space - thereby clarifying many of the ‘great debates’ in sociological theory.

It’s a dense read but a worthwhile one, so we’ve planned a workshop to help make it a bit more accessible. The workshop will have the following format:

• we’ll teach the model “sources of social power” in a briefer way than it’s covered in the book. The theories aren’t complex and there’s a lot of “academic rigour” and persuasion which we’ll skip :)
• we’ll split the fun part (the history!) into adapted sections and in groups we’ll read these sections, and then we’ll come back together to discuss the theory applied to history and the evolution of institutions of social power
• we’ll conclude with an informal discussion about what we’ve read, what was interesting, and about the workshop in the context of an anti-university

Part of the 2025 Antiuniversity Festival.

The launch of the London chapter of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), the world’s largest nonprofit membership organisation serving all individuals who create games. An evening of thought-provoking talks, panels and networking targeted at those who work, or are seeking to work in the games industry.

​Bring your instrument, your voice, or just come to listen and vibe with us. If you haven’t had much chance to play in a while this jam is for you - dust off your instrument and rediscover the joy of making music together in a friendly, no-pressure environment.

​​​​​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.

Join us for our 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 are provided, all you need is to bring yourself and a laptop. You can also participate remotely via zoom link.

​​​​​All technologists, activists, organisers and campaigners are welcome. We also welcome any new people who are interested in politics, technology and evidence based campaign innovation on the left.

​While economies stand to gain a lot from the next big thing in tech, many in creative sectors seem inadequately compensated when their work is used to train models.

​Regulation takes time, big tech is powerful, and ‘superintellience’ is an attention hog. So…

• ​Is the incoming economic impact far bigger, and IP is just a sidebar from the main event?
• ​Where are governments and tech companies in this right now?
• ​What does a future look like where AI is trained ethically?

This is an unconference (open discussion event) where you can bring up your interests, concerns, and knowledge around the present and future impact of generative AI on IP law and the creative industries.

​We’ll open with speakers (TBA), and food will be provided during the break. Please arrive at 18:30 for a 19:00 start.

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

How do you deal with knowledge management? How do you know things?

What type of data do you need to track, access, search, store, process, output? Papers, citations, bookmarks, books, movies to watch? How does your system support you in your endeavours (or fight you?)?

Is it even worth organising knowledge when information is a search away, or can be reconstructed by AI? What purposes might a knowledge management system serve in this context?’

Where does your knowledge go? In which outputs? Can people excited by your work find you and subscribe to you?

This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​Robust evaluation depends on understanding uncertainty, and statistics provides the language for doing so. Even simple questions — has this intervention made a difference, or is what we see just chance? — require clear reasoning about probability and sampling.

​This session introduces those foundations, showing how statistical thinking helps distinguish real impact from noise, and how small errors in design or interpretation can lead to big mistakes.

• ​Probability from first principles
• ​Understanding samples and how they generalise
• ​Applying statistical reasoning to real-world questions

​Andreas Varotsis is a data scientist and AI engineer who works to improve operational delivery and services across government using technology, data, and evidence. He’s spent the previous decade in various roles in central government and front-line delivery, including the Metropolitan Police Service, the data-science team of 10 Downing Street, and the Incubator for AI.

​He works to support a range of cross-government communities, including Evidence House, which works to improve the use of data and IT in government, and the Society of Evidence Based Policing, which champions research to enhance policing practices and reduce crime.

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​Many possible pieces of technology require data about some aspect of the world in order to function. There are a number of powerful open dataset that can form the basis of a wide range of tools.

​We will survey a range of different large online data sources, examining what kinds of questions we might be able to answer, as well as getting to the practical stage of being able to extract usable data from these repositories

​The rest of the session will be devoted to thinking through a worked example of how we would go about using these data sources to answer the question “What are politically active organisations in the UK saying to their members?”

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House. It is primarily for faculty and fellowship candidates to start with, but if you don’t meet those criteria and are particularly interested do get in touch!

“Agile is dead. Long live Agile.”

​Development keeps getting faster, and parts of it are getting increasingly commodified. The existing project management and planning methodologies are struggling to keep up.

​How would you structure a project, whether a personal one that you’re working on or one you’re working with a team on, to maximise your chances of success? Is it realistic to build a new feature every day? What does this change about how we do development?

​We will work through an example of vertical slicing, and look at some tool choices for planning.

Part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty, fellows, and fellowship candidates.

​A space to make computer things with other people. Beginners, dabblers, and pros are all welcome. Explore, tinker, and share what you’re learning.

​Whether no-code, low-code, vibe-code, or trad-code — whatever you’re into, bring it along.

​Drawing room: Co-working and peer learning, work on your own projects, pick up ideas from others, or try out one of the many resources and suggestions floating around.

​Classroom: Workshops tbc - let Ed know if you want to run one.

Moving away from human-centred AI - what can we unravel in a world where humans, machines and other beings bring their unique features towards a flourishing society?

​Just us for an intimate AI Salon gathering to explore the opportunities and challenges posed by asking

• What kinds of intelligence might unfold when we move away from current anthropocentric design systems?
• How might humans interact with them and bring forth new emerging intelligence?
• Why the need to move beyond current methods in AI design, alignment and governance?

​Whilst we want to ensure current AI systems are safe, ethical and trustworthy, with appropriate guardrails in place, we miss the opportunity to reflect on what makes us truly human and where machines can fill in the gaps and bring forth new types of intelligence, such as emerging intelligence at the junction between humans, machines and other sentient beings.

​Some of the questions we will address and reflect on:

• Where have current AI alignment methods failed us and what opportunities can we unravel if we go beyond human-aligned evaluation methods?
• How can we use AI systems to reflect on human ethics and in effect, use these as human simulations?
• What kind of novel AI architectures and models could we unfold if we look at non-human intelligence, and can we build an ecosystem whereby the sum of the parts is larger than the whole? Are there neglected biological intelligent behaviours that we can learn from?
• What makes us uniquely human and where can we augment machines to fill in the gaps to enable a thriving ecosystem where all sentient beings, natural or artificial, can bring forth their uniqueness and unleash their full potential?

​We invite thinkers, researchers, designers, ethicists, creatives and anyone with an interest in how we shape AI systems to join the discussion.

​Please see below some papers and resources to give you a flavour of the topics we will discuss:

• Moving Away From Anthropocentrism (PhiAI)
• After Alignment (Antikythera)
• Diverse Intelligences (Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc.) 
• What is Intelligence? (Antikythera)

​This is an in-person event. To facilitate smooth and cohesive conversations, please arrive between 6-6:30pm for a prompt discussion start at 6:30pm.

​​​​The AI Salon is a global community founded in San Francisco focused on intimate, small-sized group discussions on the sociological, economic, cultural, and philosophical impacts and meaning of AI developments. We host small group discussions, all of which you can find on our calendar. You can find summaries of our previous conversations on our substack.

​This event is done in collaboration with PhiAI, an online magazine at the intersection of technology and the humanities, run as a writer’s collective.

​​Please be advised: Unfortunately, space is very limited at these events and we can not always accept everyone we would like to. We base acceptances based on levels of interest and passion demonstrated in registration question answers. If you are not accepted to this event, please try and come to another!

Seize the mechanics of your games, join the Mod Jam movement!

Join us for the second event in the Mod Jam series with Mod Jam #02 - ToxiCity.

​The Mod Jam series demonstrates how re-purposing, remixing, expanding and hi-jacking existing games can be channeled for collective expression.

​Staying with the legendary Doom (1993) and building upon our experiences from previous sessions, we will explore the alternative narratives that can break through the confines of Doom’s strict yet open game environment. Can Doomguy address contemporary toxicity while operating radioactive waste facilities?

​Modding allows us to reclaim agency. It is an act of opening possibilities within an existing system, to change a world using its own rules and constraints - performance applied to gameplay. As a community-led practice to appropriate, tweak, expand and improve the medium, modding can help us free the creative genie from the gaming industry’s bottle.

​Outline

• Recap on modding and Doom (we are planning a workshop event dedicated to this prior to this event too)
• Brainstorming
• Jam
• Presentations

​Checklist

• No programming skills required as basic modding (assets/textures) is done through file-swapping into packages that we can run through pre-installed software
• Computer (If you don’t have a computer, think about how you could collaborate with the other people. Drawing on paper? Writing? Sound making?, etc.)
• If you can, you can pre-install ZDOOM and Slade in advance.
• You can also install a DOOM level builders such as Ultimate Doom Builder. (For Mac, Eureka seems to work kind of OK)
• You could also get a WAD file such as FREEDOOM but for this, you can wait until the event
• We’re planning to organise a separate workshop event before this. The date is to be announced but you could plan to attend that one too sometime the week before the jam

​​Please note that we won’t be providing food so feel free to bring your own and there will be plenty of food options nearby.

​​​​​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.

Join us for our 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 are provided, all you need is to bring yourself and a laptop. You can also participate remotely via zoom link.

​​​​​All technologists, activists, organisers and campaigners are welcome. We also welcome any new people who are interested in politics, technology and evidence based campaign innovation on the left.

This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​This is a lecture on the protocols of social networks. We’ll talk about:

• ​How do digital social networks shape political power today?
• ​Can decentralised social networks contribute to decentralised political power (eg. democracy)?
• ​Protocols and tech we’ll talk about:
  • ​Twitter as a protocol
  • ​Mastodon, ActivityPub, the Fediverse
  • ​Bluesky and the AT Protocol

​Join us in shaping Wiser Futures!

​What is it?

​This gathering of communities will explore paths to a planetary society defined by long-term thinking, collective wisdom and interconnectedness.

​Purpose

​Co-hosted by Second Renaissance London and Long Now London the aim is to bring people together from a range of aligned London-based communities - as well as folks who are new to the scene but want to learn more and take part.

​Together, we’ll seek out commonalities, grow networks, cross-pollinate ideas, practice together and build the field.

​Structure

​The format is strongly participant-led, with the content shaped by you, the participants.

​You can host a group session of any kind you choose - just bear in mind that the break-out areas are best suited for groups of around 12 or less.

​We encourage particants to add to the timetable in advance using this form. We’ll also have an unconference-style physical board you can add to on the day to propose a session.

​Some examples of what you could host:

• an introduction to your project or community, with Q&A
• a facilitated discussion on a topic of interest
• a presentation on a topic of interest with Q&A
• a structured group practice such as guided meditation or authentic relating

​Whether you have something you want to share, or just want to learn from and connect with others, you’re very welcome!

This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​In this session we will examine a political technology project with an existing evaluation, working through how it was designed, what evidence it produced, whether that evidence convincingly demonstrated impact, and what lessons can be drawn for future work.

​By dissecting a concrete case, we will draw out lessons on both good practice and common mistakes, and consider how evaluation choices shape the trajectory of projects that seek to create change.

​Andreas Varotsis is a data scientist and AI engineer who works to improve operational delivery and services across government using technology, data, and evidence. He’s spent the previous decade in various roles in central government and front-line delivery, including the Metropolitan Police Service, the data-science team of 10 Downing Street, and the Incubator for AI.

​He works to support a range of cross-government communities, including Evidence House, which works to improve the use of data and IT in government, and the Society of Evidence Based Policing, which champions research to enhance policing practices and reduce crime.

Join us for a showcase and hackday, where we will present the tools we have developed to date, give a workshop on how to build on WhatsApp, and spend the afternoon hacking together on new ideas.

Chat Hackers is a group of technologists dedicated to developing tools that support organisers on WhatsApp, Signal, and other chat apps. We come together to work on solutions that address the coordination challenges of campaigns and community groups. Chat Hackers was established through a partnership between John Evans (spacetu.be), Campaign Lab and Newspeak House.

​​​​​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.

Join us for our 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 are provided, all you need is to bring yourself and a laptop. You can also participate remotely via zoom link.

​​​​​All technologists, activists, organisers and campaigners are welcome. We also welcome any new people who are interested in politics, technology and evidence based campaign innovation on the left.

​​​​​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.

Join us for our 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 are provided, all you need is to bring yourself and a laptop. You can also participate remotely via zoom link.

​​​​​All technologists, activists, organisers and campaigners are welcome. We also welcome any new people who are interested in politics, technology and evidence based campaign innovation on the left.

​To mark our first decade, Newspeak House presents a series of talks and workshops from fellows and faculty across a full weekend conference. Keep up with the latest developments in the field, meet faces new and old, relax on our terrace, enjoy an all day buffet, and socialise late into the evening. Full programme TBA.

17:00-23:00 Friday 5 December
10:00-23:00 Saturday 6 December
10:00-22:00 Sunday 12 December

Newspeak House 10th Anniversary: a decade of Political Technology

The tenth anniversary of Newspeak House marks a decade shaped by profound political and technological change.

Smartphones. Group chats. Attention algorithms. Crowdfunding. Language models. Cryptocurrencies. Collaborative documents. Streaming. Emoji reacts. Privacy laws. The gig economy. Six UK elections. Brexit. Covid. Momentum. Ukraine. Reform. Gaza. Trump (twice). Cambridge Analytica. The birth and collapse of Buzzfeed, Vice, Gawker. Wikidata from zero to a hundred million items.

In that time Newspeak House has hosted thousands of events, launched twenty books, and graduated over a hundred fellows, many now in senior positions across a spectrum of key institutions.

We have supported fledgling movements that are now part of the furniture: impact evaluation, open data, service design, election tech, existential risk, community strategy, campaign innovation, decentralised social media, digital democracy, cognitive security, prediction markets, data journalism, and many more.

Furthermore, Newspeak House has become home for the London College of Political Technology, offering a formal one year programme with a homegrown faculty and original curriculum, with a dedicated classroom and a majority of non-resident students.

To mark our first decade, Newspeak House presents a series of talks and workshops from fellows and faculty across a full weekend conference. Keep up with the latest developments in the field, meet faces new and old, relax on our terrace, enjoy our all day buffet, and socialise late into the evening.

Fundraiser: for the next ten years

If you don’t support your civic institutions, they go away. As well as a conference and celebration, this event is also a fundraiser to secure the future of the college and its role as a community space.

Newspeak House has weathered a series of serious challenges, not least the pandemic and its aftermath. This event is to celebrate overcoming those challenges, becoming one of the very few autonomous and independent third spaces to still be opening its doors. However, these challenges have demolished financial reserves that are difficult to rebuild beyond the college’s normal activities.

It is with this in mind that we have set our prices for this landmark celebration. Your ticket contributes to the ongoing financial health of Newspeak House, as well as scholarships for students in future years. We are extremely grateful for all of your support.

If you’ve enjoyed the programming and facilitation of Newspeak House over the last ten years, now is the time to show your support. If you can’t attend the event, you can still donate or become a member!

​​​​​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.

Join us for our 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 are provided, all you need is to bring yourself and a laptop. You can also participate remotely via zoom link.

​​​​​All technologists, activists, organisers and campaigners are welcome. We also welcome any new people who are interested in politics, technology and evidence based campaign innovation on the left.

​​​​​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.

Join us for our 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 are provided, all you need is to bring yourself and a laptop. You can also participate remotely via zoom link.

​​​​​All technologists, activists, organisers and campaigners are welcome. We also welcome any new people who are interested in politics, technology and evidence based campaign innovation on the left.