Information for applying for the Sociodigital Futures Residencies
Find below more information about applying for the Sociodigital Futures Residencies.
Context: About the ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures
We live in a sociodigital world – a world where society and digital technology are increasingly bound together. Founded in 2022, the Centre for Sociodigital Futures is a flagship £10m research centre, funded by the ESRC and led by the University of Bristol in collaboration with 12 other Universities in the UK and globally.
The Centre aims to generate new approaches to fairer and more sustainable societies by exploring sociodigital futures-in-the-making. To do this, the centre has assembled an interdisciplinary team of social science, engineering and arts researchers to investigate what kinds of sociodigital futures are being claimed and made, and who or what is shaping them.
Through our work we’re seeking to understand what impact these possible futures may have upon social and economic inequalities, and in relation to the climate crisis.
This is a new and developing field. We’re building its potential by creating tools, methodologies and theoretical frameworks to facilitate wider sociodigital futures research; and by supporting a new cohort of sociodigital futures expertise through our early career researchers, our visiting fellows programme, and this new designer/artist in residence scheme.
For further info see: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/research/centres/sociodigital-futures/ and https://youtu.be/3axk3L5xUxo
The residency/commission:
We are looking to commission 4 artists, designers or creative technologists to be in residence with us between October 2025 and June 2026.
You will collaborate with researchers and partners from the Centre for Sociodigital Futures to make creative and/or speculative work building on ongoing research and exploring or materialising particular sociodigital futures issues or questions.
The art or design work you co-create with the Centre will be included in a public exhibition in June 2026. This exhibition will be an opportunity to reach out to a wider public and to engage people with different expertise and experiences with crucial issues related to sociodigital futures.
Work created could take many forms, including physical or digital artworks, design fictions, prototypes, provotypes (prototypes that embody particular provocations), critical designs or services, systems, applications or experiences.
From October to December 2025, resident artists or designers will participate in workshops with Centre members to form teams around shared interests, ideate and critically make together. With Centre collaborators you will experiment with art and design-thinking methods and explore approaches to materialising sociodigital futures.
Then, you will co-create works that can be shown in the June 2026 exhibition, which intervene in or enable reflection on sociodigital futures in-the-making. Throughout the process you will continue to engage with the Centre, working closely with your team, liaising regularly with CenSoF researchers, and with the exhibition producer/curator.
By combining creative skills with insights from social science and digital innovation/engineering, you’ll create ideas that spark conversation, inspire change, and challenge assumptions about the future role of technologies in our lives.
What kind of exhibition?
It is anticipated that the exhibition will:
- run in Bristol, for 7-10 days, potentially with an online shareable resource and/or a touring element.
- include interactive experiences, technology prototypes and speculative artefacts that provoke conversations across diverse publics about questions related to sociodigital futures.
- engage researchers from different disciplines and professionals, as well as being accessible to public audiences.
- explore critical questions, problems and/or scenarios emerging from and developing the Centre’s ongoing research.
- Be accompanied by a programme of engagement events, talks and workshops, which we will curate, and the artists may be able to be involved in.
Further information
Application process
Please send your expression of interest (EOI) of up to 2 pages to censof-enquiries@bristol.ac.uk by 9.00am on Friday 19th September.
Or a link to a video of up to 5 minutes.
Your EOI should respond to the following questions, which we will use to assess written or video applications:
- Why are you interested in this call?
- What approach would you take to the residency and collaborating with CenSoF researchers and partners?
- What relevant experience and expertise would you bring to the residency and co-creating an artwork/design with us?
- Tell us about 2 works you have created or collaborated on that relate to this call.
- Please provide links to documentation of these works. If the material is not available online you can email a PDF.
Please include your contact details so that we can get in touch.
Shortlisted artists/designers will be invited to interviews on Thursday 2nd October, to discuss their expressions of interest and to find out more about their approaches. We aim to hold the interviews face to face but can provide an online option for those who cannot make it in person. Please save time on this day to meet with us.
Example questions or challenges that art or design work could explore:
- How can we demystify AI systems and make their operations more transparent and comprehensible to non-experts?
- What are the environmental impacts of large-scale data operations, and how might we design systems with both social justice and sustainability in mind?
- What are the new rituals of home life shaped by AI, smart devices, robots and/or immersive technologies?
- How does technology change the way emotions are experienced, understood, and located—within a person or an environment?
- What are future modes of embodiment, and how might technology influence our relationships with our bodies and how we experience space around us?
- How do emotion-sensing technologies reshape the relationship between individuals, governments, and mobility systems? What could cross-border mobility systems look like if they weren’t premised on surveillance and control?
- How can communities and individuals reclaim digital sovereignty and how could digital governance be designed to be more participatory and democratic, for instance using blockchain, DAOs, or self-hosted data infrastructures?
- How can immersive technologies be used to amplify community voices rather than centralising control in tech corporations?
- How might community-led AR and VR projects enable more participatory urban design, activism, or heritage preservation?
References for inspiration:
- Creatures Catalogue: https://creatures-eu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/CreaTuresCatalogue.pdf
- Ars Electronica’s Prix Ars Electronica https://ars.electronica.art/prix/en/ and STARTS Prize https://starts-prize.aec.at/en/
- Superflux projects: https://superflux.in/#
- The Parliament of Things
- Carbon Ruins
- Museum of The Future
- Tega Bain’s Solar Protocol and other works: https://tegabrain.com/Solar-Protocol
- Serpentine Gallery’s Arts Technologies https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/arts-technologies/, Future Art Ecosystems https://futureartecosystems.org/, and Holly Herndon and Matt Dryhurst’s Choral Data ‘Trust’ Experiment White Paper: https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/holly-herndon-mat-dryhurst-the-call/
- AIxDESIGN: https://aixdesign.co/about
- AI Commons Report: https://oneproject.org/ai-commons/