Our Pilot to Proof Event

Plenty of people in Leeds had worked out that AI mattered. Far fewer had anywhere safe to actually try it. The people who most wanted to: someone returning to work after years out, a café owner, a parent, were the least likely to sign up for something that looked like a course, and the least likely to have anyone to ask. Small business owners had a different version of the same problem: enough awareness to be uneasy about it, not enough grounding to decide what to do on Monday. What was missing wasn't information. It was a room, in a place people already walk past.

• Three days of sessions at Trinity Leeds, in the city centre
• Every Day AI - a one-hour introduction for complete beginners
• AI for Business - a two-hour session for small business owners
• Six sessions in total, running from 10:00 through the afternoon
• Hands-on throughout: everyone built something in the room

Six sessions ran across the three days. Every Day AI at 10:00 and 12:00, AI for Business at 14:00. The 10:00 sessions filled from bookings. The 12:00 slot was the one nobody predicted: by Day 2 and Day 3 it was the highest-demand session of the day. Lunchtime is the only free hour a lot of people get, and it turned out to be the hour that decided who could come at all. Every Day AI covered practical prompting, the difference between a chat and an agent, and where AI is actually safe and useful in ordinary life. None of it as theory, everyone engaged with the workshop. AI for Business went further: how to approach adoption, structured prompting using the RCTO framework, and building an agent that runs. The afternoon business sessions consistently pulled walk-ins on top of the people who had booked. That only happens when the room is visible and stepping into it costs nothing socially, which is the argument for running this in a shopping centre rather than a lecture theatre or a co-working space.