AI Lab and Applied AI for Culture, Evaluation and Education
Since 2026, the Cultural Policy Lab has placed artificial intelligence at the centre of its development. The focus lies on new forms of knowledge work, data-sovereign AI solutions and the question of how AI can be used in cultural, educational and evaluation contexts in ways that create more time for what matters most.
The Challenge
Artificial intelligence is no longer just a topic for the tech industry. It is rapidly transforming knowledge work, communication, evaluation and organisational processes - including in cultural and educational institutions. At the same time, the field is marked by confusion: between exaggerated promises, legitimate concerns and a flood of tools often used without strategic coherence. That was our starting challenge: not to treat AI as either hype or mere defence, but as a task of active design. In many of our consulting projects, we see how strongly organisations are pressured by time constraints, complexity and overloaded workflows. Even where funding conditions are relatively stable, there is often too little time for conceptual depth, reflection and communication. This led us to ask how AI can be used in ways that do not create more noise, but instead restore the capacity to act.
Our Approach
At our 2026 strategy retreat, we therefore decided to place AI at the centre of our activities. This affects our own way of working as much as our future positioning as a thought leader for new technologies in evaluation, data visualisation, applied cultural research and strategic communication. Our approach is explicitly not about repeating the promises of the tech industry. We are interested in a different path: practical, data-sovereign, experimental and grounded in the real challenges of cultural and educational organisations. We work at the intersection of culture and applied artificial intelligence. What matters most to us is translation: between tech discourses and the concrete questions faced by administrations, cultural institutions, research settings and educational actors. Instead of abstract future claims, we test tools and workflows ourselves in different contexts - from AI writing labs and AI-supported data visualisation to presentation design and questions of local, data-sovereign AI infrastructures.
The Solution
From this perspective, we are building an AI Lab. It serves as a space for peer learning, experimentation and the development of applied formats. Initial cooperations are already underway. Among them, Dr. Christian Steinau is taking on the newly established AI Research Workshop of Jutta Bergen / Coachingzone Wissenschaft. Once a month, he offers sessions on changing topics such as data visualisation with AI, AI writing labs, creating presentations with AI and AI in science communication. Further cooperations - including one with the University of Goettingen - are being prepared. At the same time, we are developing our own formats and talks, including on local and data-sovereign AI solutions for personal work environments. This is deliberately not only about tool competence, but about sovereignty: how can new technologies be used in ways that allow organisations to remain in control, simplify processes meaningfully and regain time for substantive work? This is what we see as the core of our work on new knowledge practices.
Impact & Transfer
An important public step in this direction was the conference "KI als Partner? Neue Wege in der Evaluation von Kultur & Kulturpolitik," initiated for March 2026 at the Goethe-Institut in Munich by Dr. Christian Steinau in his role as co-speaker of the DeGEval working group on culture and cultural policy together with partner organisations. The response to this topic is strong because many actors sense that AI will profoundly change the practice of evaluation, reporting, analysis and communication - even though robust routines for dealing with it are still missing. For the Cultural Policy Lab, this work is therefore more than a new topic. It marks a programmatic development. We do not want merely to comment on AI, but to develop models through which cultural and educational organisations can use new technologies in ways that create room to breathe, improve their understanding of impact and strengthen their capacity to act. Our goal is a transformation beyond the tech bubble: with more clarity, more autonomy and more time for what matters most.