Politeia Lab — Where Democracy Meets Intelligence.

Events

From AI Futures to Democratic Infrastructure

📍 Digital Skills Festival 2026 | AI Futures Day | Manchester - 6th February 2026

One of the most pressing challenges facing UK democracy today is the erosion of public trust — driven by fragmented information, opaque decision-making, and limited ways for citizens to meaningfully engage with local government.

This isn’t a communications problem. It’s an infrastructure problem.

At Politeia Lab, we are building practical, scalable civic technology that helps councils and public institutions:

✅ Receive structured, actionable citizen requests.

✅ Improve policy transparency and data access.

✅ Verify public claims, policies, and decisions using AI-supported validation.

✅ Rebuild trust through two-way civic engagement, not box-ticking consultation.

Attending AI Futures Day at Digital Skills Festival 2026 strengthened our technical and strategic foundations — especially around responsible Agentic AI, AI capability (not tool-chasing), and rapid but accountable prototyping.

Key learnings came from:

The Vibe Coding Masterclass by Sara Simeone (NoCodeLab.ai) showed how AI-assisted development can turn civic ideas into functional prototypes — fast, responsibly, and with purpose.

Equally insightful was the session on Agentic AI in practice by George Shilton and @Tim Brewin (Lloyds Banking Group) — a masterclass in deploying AI to solve real problems, not chase hype.

👏 Huge thanks to the organisers and speakers:

Katie Gallagher OBE

@Chris Mitchell – Zopa Bank

Sara Simeone – NoCodeLab.ai

George Shilton & @Tim Brewin – Lloyds Banking Group

Simon Riley – Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Phil Birchenall – Diagonal Thinking

Tom Stables Stablers

And thanks to @ManchesterDigital for hosting such a future-focused event.

🤝 A call to funders and councils

Politeia Lab is now moving from prototype to pilot.

We are actively seeking: