Generating Futures: Using AI to Imagine Sustainable Places

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Can Generative AI help us imagine a more sustainable world? Generating Futures brings together communities, artists, geographers and climate scientists to co-create visions of a sustainable future using the power of AI.

The series of events are funded by Research Ireland as part of Science Week 2025, and are run by the Centre for Creative Technologies and Urban Lab, both based at University of Galway.

You are welcome to join one or more of these workshops which run over Science Week, November 11th – 14th.

Workshop Bookings

Details and links to register to attend the 4 workshops being run as part of this series are given below.

  1. Reimagining Nuns Island: A Speculative Design Walk
  2. Collect Your Own Small & Local Dataset
  3. Envisioning Future Placemaking through AI Visualisation Technologies
  4. Brain Computer Interfaces and imagination – When Science and Art Meet

 


 

Workshop: Reimagining Nuns Island: A Speculative Design Walk

Facilitator: Lua Flannery

Dates: 11th November 2025

Times:  the same workshop runs twice at:

  • Morning session - 11:00 am – 12.15 am (duration 1.15 hours)
  • Afternoon session - 2:00 pm – 3:15 pm (duration 1.15 hours)

Age appropriate: all ages. UrbanLab App use is 13+

Details

Lua event banner imageJoin us on a creative exploration of Nuns Island, an area layered with industrial and cultural heritage, much of it long quiet but brimming with potential for a vibrant sustainable future. Our guided walk activates spatial imagination through walking, talking, and creative exercises, inviting participants to observe, sketch, and reflect on how sustainability and community-led ideas can shape the spaces we share.

Through conversation, creative exercises, and generative AI technology, we'll imagine future possibilities for the area. The ideas, stories, and images generated will contribute to a shared vision, exploring how creativity, local knowledge, and technology can come together to build more sustainable and resilient cities.

Access and Inclusion: This workshop seeks to be inclusive and accessible. We welcome diverse ways of participating and will endeavour to accommodate mobility, sensory, and communication needs. Please contact l.flannery11@universityofgalway.ie with any requirements to support your participation.

Free Registration:

 


 

Collect Your Own Small & Local Dataset

Facilitator: Alaz Okudan

Dates: 12th November 2025

Times:  the same workshop runs twice at:

  • Morning session - 11:00 am – 12.15 am (duration 1.15 hours)
  • Afternoon session - 2:00 pm – 3:15 pm (duration 1.15 hours)

Age appropriate: all ages.

Alaz event banner imageThis workshop discusses the large-scale data collection practices that are used within AI models and explores alternative approaches that are small, slow, and intimate. While conventional large-scale methods extract online information without consent and operate invisibly within algorithmic black boxes, this workshop demonstrates that datasets can be thoughtfully sourced, manageable, and non-extractive.

The workshop invites Galway community members to identify what they find significant about their city and take a short walk on the university campus, collecting data through photography, writing, drawing, sound recording, found objects, or lived experiences. These materials will form a collective, human-scale dataset about Galway, fostering discussion about how small yet diverse datasets can create meaning and tell stories about the places we inhabit, showing that data need not be massive commercial collections beyond human comprehension.

Access and Inclusion: This workshop seeks to be inclusive and accessible. We welcome diverse ways of participating and will endeavour to accommodate mobility, sensory, and communication needs. Please contact A.Okudan1@universityofgalway.ie with any requirements to support your participation.

Free Registration 

 


 

Envisioning Future Placemaking through AI Visualisation Technologies

Facilitator: Hermano Luz Rodrigues

Dates: 13th November 2025

Times:  the same workshop runs twice at:

  • Morning session - 11:00 am – 12.15 am (duration 1.15 hours)
  • Afternoon session - 2:00 pm – 3:15 pm (duration 1.15 hours)

Age appropriate: all ages.

Details

Hermao event banner imageThis workshop introduces participants to AI image-making tools for imagining the future of their public spaces. Participants will work with platforms that take text prompts and turn them into illustrations and realistic images. By reflecting on an existing environment and considering how it might or should change, they will create images of possible futures while also discussing how these technologies can impact society, both positively and negatively.

Access and Inclusion: This workshop seeks to be inclusive and accessible. We welcome diverse ways of participating and will endeavour to accommodate mobility, sensory, and communication needs. Please contact H.LuzRodrigues1@universityofgalway.ie with any requirements to support your participation.

Free Registration 

 


 

Brain Computer Interfaces and imagination – When Science and Art Meet

Facilitator: Rocío Romero Grau

Dates: 14th November 2025

Times:  the same workshop runs twice at:

  • Morning session - 11:00 am – 12.15 am (duration 1.15 hours)
  • Afternoon session - 2:00 pm – 3:15 pm (duration 1.15 hours)

Age appropriate: all ages. EEG headsets can be used by children under parental supervision.

Details

Rocio event banner imageWhat does our brain look like when it imagines a better future? This workshop invites the public to participate in an interactive experience using EEG (electroencephalogram) devices, which track brain activity. Participants will see in real time how their brainwaves are transformed into moving visual images while imagining sustainable futures. In this workshop, the act of imagining becomes a visible artistic creation that reminds us of the unique human capacity to imagine a different world. 

Access and Inclusion: This workshop seeks to be inclusive and accessible. We welcome diverse ways of participating and will endeavour to accommodate mobility, sensory, and communication needs. Please contact R.RomeroGrau1@universityofgalway.ie with any requirements to support your participation.

Free Registration