Active experiment in collective agency

Prometheus Protocol

A civic rehearsal for collective agency in the age of AI.

Most people encounter Al as something already decided. The tools arrive. The systems are adopted. The decisions have already been made.Prometheus creates a different experience.Participants step into live scenarios where decisions about AI, power, ownership and public value are still unfolding, and rehearse what collective agency feels like before those decisions become inevitable.

The question

AI is reshaping public life

Who owns the infrastructure? Who captures the value?
Who decides what enters schools, hospitals, local governments and civic institutions?These choices are often presented as technical decisions. But they are also political, economic and democratic ones. They need public participation.

The Prometheus Protocol explores how ordinary people might regain a sense of agency within these systems.

How it works

Prometheus is a protocol for collective experimentation.A small group of people of different ages and life experiences gathers in a local spot, maybe a park, a library, a museum.They are there for a sort of improv theatre. A scene gets read and some roles are offered, with a few lines to start. The rest is what they make of it. And what happens is always interesting.

1. Enter the story

Participants encounter a fictional but plausible situation rooted in real tensions. Some volunteer to play a role. Others observe.

2. Freeze the moment

The facilitator freezes the scene at a point of maximum tension. An invitation is made to the audience: who wants to take on a role?

3. Step in

Anyone can replace a character and try a different move. Not to fix the situation but to discover what else is possible.

The lineage of this practice

The Prometheus Protocol draws from participatory futures, democratic innovation, systems change practice, and the emancipatory traditions of popular education.At its core is a simple proposition: people develop agency not by discussing change from a distance, but by experiencing it together.Even a shotThat gap from knowing what needs to happen and getting some momentum going can be bridged through something playful, but recognisable.A way to activate that can be through a rehearsal.The protocol draws inspiration from Augusto Boal's Forum Theatre and Paulo Freire's work on critical consciousness, adapting their insights to one of the defining governance challenges of our time: the rapid development and deployment of artificial intelligence.Rather than asking participants to debate AI as an abstract technology, the protocol places them inside plausible future situations where decisions about data, power, ownership, accountability, and public value are being made.By stepping into these scenarios, participants can explore how technological futures are shaped, who gets to participate in those decisions, and what forms of collective action become possible when communities move from passive observers to active co-authors of the future.

What becomes possible

First, a kind of immersion that's surprising to everyone. These are new shoes to walk in, and yet people connect quickly to their roles and start building a story that's resonant, and also suprising.As others step in, the story changes. After the scenes, there's a debrief to reflect on what emerged, and what made it possible. Many leaving asking: "what's next?"

Naming the stakes

Language for conversations that felt inaccessible. Understanding happens by embodying a role.

Seeing the system

Power dynamics and structures that shape decisions become visible. Acting differently can change the constellation, and open new possibilities within real constraints.

Discovering alternatives

Next to the emergent strategies and the collective intelligence surfaced through the rehearsal, participants also learn about alternatives that exist or are being built.

And then,
sometimes,
something travels.

The rehearsal is rarely the end of the story.A conversation continues. A relationship forms. A new experiment begins. Someone hosts a session of their own. An idea finds a new context.Sometimes the most important thing is not what happens in the room, but what travels beyond it.

What's next?

Leaning into the appetite to move from rehearsal to action. Keeping the conversation alive by offering a next context to gather. If there's already creative energy, that context could be a sprint to imagine ideas to test in practice.Picture this happening in hundreds of places. Anyone can convene this, anywhere. For free, or at very low cost.

Finding the others

Most participants want to stay connected. Some find people they want to keep thinking together with, and group up. Others think of friends, colleagues or collaborators who they want to bring in.

Designing prototypes

The rehearsal experience unlocks a curiosity for sparking collective intelligence. Some participants sign up to host a protocol at work or in another context. Others connect to an idea from the conversation and want to design small prototypes to learn what might work.

Connecting new nodes

Some people build their own experiments. Others stay connected to the emergent community of explorers and experimenters, to get inspired to test something of their own. Either as action or ideas, new possibilities travel back into workplaces, communities and institutions.

Iterations

Oxford

April 2026 - Sidebar
Friendly co-option proved harder to resist than open conflict.Read more →

Sao Paulo

May 2026 - Jornada IA para Impacto
Community data as equity. A proposal nobody in the room had considered.Read more →

Coimbra

June 2026 - Community session
People named concern they had never voiced publicly before.Read more →

Sibiu

July 2026 - Community session
People named concern they had never voiced publicly before.Read more →

A living commons

Every iteration leaves traces.
The interventions people attempt. The tensions that surface. The unexpected possibilities that emerge in the rehearsal and in the debrief, that might inspire new experiments to test those ideas in practice.We document these openly as a growing commons of civic ingenuity.

Oxford

April 2026

Sao Paulo

May 2026

Coimbra

May 2026

Sibiu

July 2026

Next places

With you?

ATTEND

Join an upcoming public session and experience the protocol.

View upcoming gatherings →

HOST

Bring the Protocol to your organisation, network or community.

Learn how to host →

FAQ

What makes this work in practice?

A few conditions matter a lot.

The work starts from a real tension, something people can actually feel, not a hypothetical problem.

It stays close to what's already present: the relationships, capacities, constraints, and energy in the room. We don't try to import a solution from elsewhere.

The first moves are small enough to try, even if they're incomplete. That matters more than getting them right.

There's a balance between structure and openness. Enough design to hold people through uncertainty, but not so much that everything is predetermined.

Importantly, the work includes reflection on what actually happened, not just what was intended. That's what allows it to evolve and travel.

None of this guarantees outcomes. But when these conditions are in place, something tends to shift. People begin to see what they can do together, and that's usually where things start.

What actually happens in one of your sessions?

It depends on the format, but in every case it's something more than a workshop. Participants don't sit and listen for long. They move, take positions, work in small groups on real tensions, and leave with something specific: a first move, a committed conversation, or a connection to someone they didn't expect to find themselves working with.

We publish field notes from each session so you can see what actually happened, including what didn't quite land, not just what we designed for.

What would working together look like?

It usually starts with a real tension in your context. Something that feels urgent, stuck, or emerging that people can feel but don't yet know how to move on.

From there, we design a first experiment, a live activation with a small group, usually around 15 to 20 people.

Sometimes that first move is enough. Sometimes it opens something people want to continue.

In those cases, the work can extend into a series of experiments, across places, or into developing and adapting the underlying protocols.

There is no standard pathway. Each step depends on what becomes possible next.

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Live experiments for collective agency. Rooted in place, designed to travel.

Behind the practice

Stewarded by Alexandra Stef, based in Madrid and working internationally.Working languages: English, Spanish, Romanian.

Writing

Notes to surface patterns, ask better questions, and share learnings beyond single initiatives.