Building AI Resilience in a Rapidly Evolving World
AI Literacy Northland is about helping communities understand and get involved with artificial intelligence.
Our mission? To build essential skills and resilience right from the flax roots.
We’re working on practical solutions that help everyone navigate today’s digital world with confidence.
The project emerges from our Strange Intelligences Lab, significant research into AI, and decades of experience in community and organisational development and emerging technologies.
Workshops, talks, and other events have already started as part of other projects and partnerships. We’ve impacted over a thousand people (and their respective organisations) from 2023 to 2025
2025
– AI for Communities Dargaville – Grey Power/DAA/Dargaville Lifestyler
– Bahá’í Community
– Toi Ngāpuhi
– SEADS Waikato
– Emerging Artists Project with Creative Northland
– AI for Creatives Dargaville (31 March, 2025 Dargaville Arts Association)
– Creative Waikato (10 March 2025)
2024
Open Studio Strange Intelligences Lab
In-person workshops for rural organisations (Hokianga Education Trust, Rawene)
Online talks by experts during our Awhi Incubator Project ARG Lab
Talks at teacher conferences (Te Tai Tokerau Teachers Association Conference 2024)
Leadership development with community and arts leaders (October 2024)
Interactive seminars and workshops with interest groups as a collaboration with community and arts groups:
– Masonic Partners (with Whangarei Masonic Lodge)
– Toi Mai Practitioners (with Maunga Kura Toi, NorthTec)
– Fine Artists (with Angela Rowe of Creative Matters)
2023
Large public seminars in 2023 for our Alternative Reality Gardening Seminar Series
We have also completed our first AI for Creatives Introductory Workshop and created an online product for local creatives .
Both of these products can be ordered in our shop and are aimed at the absolutely basic beginner to help them gain basic literacy.
Recent Events
Leadership Seminars: AI In Communities
Is AI being used in your community organisation without you knowing? Are you turning a blind eye because it's just too hard to think about and too valuable for saving time? Are…
Conferences, Radio and Public Events – Sharing the Love
Thanks to Radio NZ for the interview on the Culture 101 show today, profiling several projects including Strange Intelligences and BioSignals. Listen to it via this link: Read and Listen to it…
Who are we supporting?
AI Literacy Northland works with social change agents, advocates, civil leaders, community organisers and educators.
Our offerings include coaching and workshops to provide communities with essential skills to navigate and address artificial intelligence’s impact.
We aim to equip community representatives with the necessary skills to engage with AI proactively, healthily, and with critical awareness and balance.
AI will significantly impact all aspects of daily life—are people aware of these impacts and how to build resilience around them?
By supporting community leaders, we will generatively support them to support others in their networks.
Training includes practical skills for using AI creatively to create positive change alongside awareness of mitigating its impact on community ecosystems.
About AI Literacy Northland
AI Literacy Northland was founded by AwhiWorld, as a response to concerns about community resilience in a region already impacted by social disparity and the environmental effects of climate change.
We bring a transdisciplinary perspective to the initiative, emphasising the interconnectedness of knowledge and practice across disciplines and cultures.
The initiative seeks to bridge gaps in AI literacy by promoting critical awareness and practical engagement at the flax root level.
It aims to empower individuals with the knowledge and skills to navigate the evolving digital landscape responsibly and in a way that supports growth and resilience.
This means building skills in critical thinking, providing appropriate tools to leverage but also safeguard personal and organisational IP, facilitating fundamental understandings of what AI is (including its creators) and building networks of practitioners who can share intelligence in every sense of that word.
We are concerned about the environmental, social, political, cultural and mental health implications of AI as an ‘intelligence’ being rolled out into our communities when there is little understanding of how it can be utilised for good or otherwise.
The initiative emerges from decades of experience working in organisational and community development and with emerging technologies.
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