Towards Equitable AI through Culture: A Workshop on Methods for Embedding Authentic Cultural Perspectives in AI

Towards Equitable AI through Culture: A Workshop on Methods for Embedding Authentic Cultural Perspectives in AI brings together researchers, technologists, artists and practitioners to explore how AI systems can be shaped through culturally grounded, community-informed approaches. Centred on the immersive project Cry to the Water, the workshop examines how traditional knowledge, ritual practice, oral histories and local collaboration can inform alternative frameworks for AI development rooted in care, context and cultural integrity.

The morning session, led by artist and creative technologist Chipo Mapondera, introduces the conceptual and research foundations of Cry to the Water. Through presentation and discussion, participants will gain insight into the project’s fieldwork in Tunisia, its engagement with Indigenous water knowledge and climate realities, and the development of an immersive AI interface that reimagines the relationship between culture, memory and emerging technologies.

In the afternoon, AI engineer Chris Tegho will lead a technical deep dive into the system’s development, unpacking how cultural data was structured, organised and integrated into a layered AI workflow. Together, the sessions offer both conceptual and practical perspectives on building more equitable and culturally responsive AI systems, while creating space for open dialogue, shared learning and collective exploration of participants’ own projects and ideas.

This event is hosted by Dr Stephanie Diepeveen and Dr Peter Chonka (King's College London) and supported by KCL's Centre for Digital Culture. 

Workshop facilitators:

Chipo Mapondera is an Artist and Creative Technologist exploring the intersection of ancestral and immersive technologies through embodied storytelling, sonic environments and speculative worldbuilding. Rooted in Indigenous knowledge systems, her work blends tradition with contemporary diasporic expression to create portals into ancestral memory and alternative ways of knowing. Her current project, Cry to the Water, was developed through the S+T+ARTS Afropean Intelligence Residency: Beyond Borders: AI, Climate and Resource Justice in Africa. The project explores global Indigenous water cultures through an Ancestral Intelligence (AI)™ model, proposing culturally grounded and community-informed alternatives to dominant AI imaginaries through care, ritual, connection and collective memory.

Chris Tegho is a machine learning engineer with a focus on computer vision, language modelling, and generative models. Chris is particularly interested in the intersection of art and machine learning, exploring themes of multiplicity, relations to others, queer experiences of belonging, and movement. Chris has collaborated extensively with contemporary artists, integrating machine learning into artworks that provoke new interpretations of reality. Recent artistic collaborations include work with artist Zach Blas on Profundior for the Berlin Biennale, which utilised diffusion models to synthesise video, and Cultus, an installation commissioned by Arebyte Gallery and Secession.