Designed by Alexandra Stef · Collective Futures · collectivefutures.eu
The Prometheus Protocol is a civic rehearsal format that gives people the embodied experience of exercising collective agency on questions about AI and power, which are currently being decided without most people's participation.
It’s not about AI as a technical problem, but as a political economy one: who owns the infrastructure, who captures the value, who governs what enters public systems, and what levers still exist for people who want to shape it differently.
A 90-minute participatory experience inspired by Forum Theatre, developed by Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal in the 1970s, adapted for today.
Participants step into short fictional but structurally honest scenes where consequential decisions about AI are being made. At a moment of maximum tension, the scene freezes. Anyone can step in, replace a character, and try something different, not to fix the scene, but to rehearse what agency actually feels like against real structural resistance.
No performance experience required. No technical background needed.
Format: 90 minutes · up to 25 participants · no equipment needed beyond a room (or outdoors) with moveable chairs
Each iteration is documented openly. The moves people make inside the scenes to shift a structural tension, the insights that surface in the debrief, the unexpected framings not designed for, these are a living commons: a growing record of civic ingenuity across different contexts, available to everyone who contributes to it.