The Festival of AI in Practice is a week-long virtual event from 26th - 30th January 2026, showcasing how councils are already using AI to improve services, reduce pressure, and rethink how things get done - right across local government.
This isn’t about emerging tech or glossy sales pitches. It’s about councils learning from councils, sharing what’s already happening, what worked, what didn’t, and what others can build on.
You’ll hear how councils are using AI to:
• Triage citizen contact • Speed up assessments • Automate repetitive admin
• Improve access to services • Support overstretched teams • And spark new ways of working
Discover more
about the festival
The programme features a mix of keynote speakers, case studies, panel conversations, and on-demand demos, all designed to spark ideas, save time, and build confidence.
Who is it for?
This is open to anyone working in or with a West Midlands local authority, including:
- Senior leaders and Chief Executives
- Heads of Service and team managers
- HR, OD and workforce professionals
- Digital, data and transformation teams
- Service leads across housing, planning, social care and more
- Elected members
- Curious colleagues with no tech background
Why attend?
AI is no longer a future concept, it’s here, and it’s already reshaping how public services are delivered.
This week is your chance to:
- Discover what others are already doing
- Save time by learning from their experiences
- Connect ideas across service areas
- Understand the risks, guardrails and real potential
- Build confidence
Whether you're leading a service, advising on policy, building solutions, or supporting teams, there's something here for you.
Get your
Festival Pass
Your council will receive:
- A Festival Pass for all shareholder council staff and elected members
- A Festival Map with all session details and links (shared in November)
- A Promo Kit to help spread the word internally
Explore AI FEST!
Click on a pin on the festival map below to discover more about what's happening at AI FEST
Who's already on the line up?
We're adding new sessions every week but here's a sneak peek at what's already confirmed
Session:
Monday 26 January 2026, 10:00–11:00am, Virtual
Title:
MANUAL OVERRIDE 2030 - Leading Humans in an AI World
Session summary: AI is reshaping work, but no one knows how or what will happen this week let alone in 2030. But leaders still need to lead and teams need clarity and confidence now. This session will cover overwhelm, managing tech, connecting with people, intergenerational change and, crucially, creating the space to think deeply.
It will share five models to help you scan the horizon, make human-centred calls and keep confidence high while the tech evolves. It is "compass, not crystal ball": principles, analysis, experiments and skills to create a team that's more in charge of the tech than tangled up in it.
Bio: Christine Armstrong studies the world of work. She writes, researches, speaks and vlogs on what the trends and data tell us is and isn’t working. Ranked 6th among the world’s top 50 Future of Work influencers and named a Top 50 Workplace Leader 2023, Christine writes regularly for national, international and business media and co-founded Jericho Chambers, an early pioneer of flexible and hybrid working.
Her weekly vlog is watched in more than 20 countries, with over 3 million viewers on topics from AI to burnout. She’s also the author of The Mother of All Jobs (Bloomsbury). Christine’s sessions blend data, stories and energy to leave audiences informed, energised and ready to rethink how work works.
Session:
Friday 30 January 2026, 10:00–11:00am, Virtual
Title:
What’s Next for AI in Public Services: Trends, Insight & Readiness
Session summary: In this closing keynote, Heather Murray will shine a spotlight on what’s coming next in AI — beyond tools and hype — with practical insight that councils can use right now. Drawing on her global work across sectors, Heather will explore:
- What leading organisations are already doing with AI
- What questions councils should be asking (and what to be concerned about)
- How to prepare and get curious even if you’re not in the tech team or digital lead
- The realistic opportunities ahead and the human challenges we’ll all face
Attendees will leave with a clearer sense of the landscape, some key ideas to carry into their teams, and the confidence to lean into what’s coming.
Bio: Heather Murray, WME’s very own AI associate, Top 5 MarTech influencer globally, international speaker and Founder of AI for Non-Techies, regularly features in Forbes magazine. Her accessible, jargon-free approach helps people overcome confusion, reluctance and fear when it comes to where to start. Heather has formed powerful working partnerships with the likes of Toyota, Mitsubishi and Salesforce, and drove $75m in client pipeline in 2023, all with the help of AI.
Heather advises clients including the UK Government, BBC, Channel 4, and Google, and offers AI training and consultancy, helping non-technical business leaders and managers integrate generative AI into their roles, businesses, and client offerings. Her goal is to optimise operations and enable scaling in ways that were previously impossible.
She brings 20 years of hands-on marketing and sales experience, backed by a First-Class marketing degree earned as a mature student in 2018. Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, Heather has dedicated over four hours a day to mastering the tools, trends, and use cases that matter most — especially for those without a tech background.
Session:
Wednesday 28 January 2026, 10:00–11:00am (the room will open at 9.45am for you to be introduced), virtual
Title:
Ethics, Governance & the New Reality of AI in Public Services
Session summary: In this powerful keynote, Jazz Rasool will unpack the often-overlooked question for local government: not just what AI can do, but how we should govern it, who it serves and what risks we still face. Drawing on international insight and decades of leadership development work, he will explore:
- The governance frameworks and ethical guardrails that public services must contend with
- How other sectors are starting to operationalise AI and what local government can borrow
- Key questions councils should be asking now about workforce, accountability and service design
- A forward-looking view of what really matters as AI becomes embedded in everyday services
Attendees will leave with clarity on how to move from curiosity to action, using governance and ethics as enabler not barrier.
Bio: Jazz Rasool is a globally recognised thinker, coach and consultant at the intersection of artificial intelligence, ethics and human potential. With a background in physics and molecular biology, and over 20 years’ experience supporting executives and organisations, Jazz founded his own consultancy and created AI-curated coaching tools and frameworks used across sectors. He serves as research lead in technology-enhanced learning, and his work focuses on how organisations can navigate the complexity of AI governance, human-machine collaboration and digital transformation in an ethical, inclusive and practical way.
Get your
Festival Pass
Your council will receive:
- A Festival Pass for all shareholder council staff and elected members
- A Festival Map with all session details and links (shared in November)
- A Promo Kit to help spread the word internally
All you need to do is choose the sessions that matter to you, and dial in.
No pressure to attend everything. No tech knowledge required. Just insight, ideas and practical learning from people like you.
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