Come Together.
A free event at Leeds Digital Festival, hosted by Lighthouse and the University of Leeds. An honest account of a year spent running peer-reviewed research and test-and-learn delivery on the same civic problem.
- When
- Thursday 24 September 2026, 3:00pm to 6:00pm
- Where
- Everyman Leeds, Level 4, Trinity, Albion Street, LS1 5AY
- Format
- Talk, open questions, then drinks
- With
- Lighthouse and the University of Leeds
Two ways of working that rarely meet.
Universities move slowly and carefully. Digital teams move fast and break things. The two sit so far apart they rarely touch, so the big thinking gets diluted before it reaches the services people use, and what a delivery team learns seldom finds its way back into the research.
The ground is shifting underneath that arrangement. Policymaking and budgets are being devolved to regions and mayors. The Treasury has written test and learn into its guidance on public spending. And AI is either the future or the end, depending on who you ask.
For the past year, Lighthouse and Professor Mark Davis of the University of Leeds have brought the two worlds together on one real problem, in a live civic lab. This is an honest account of what that produces: what each world gets wrong about the other, where AI earned its place and where it did not, and the parts still held together with tape.
What we will cover.
- 01
How the worlds of digital and academia have traditionally been incompatible, to the detriment of citizens, business and government
- 02
Why place-based problems are pulling universities and the public and private sectors closer together
- 03
A year of running peer-reviewed research and fast, test-and-learn delivery side by side on the same civic problem
- 04
Where AI earned its place in the work, the tooling we built so researchers and delivery teams could both trust it, and the places we decided it had no business being
- 05
What the Treasury’s new test-and-learn guidance changes, and what it does not
- 06
The money: huge pots, mostly the wrong shape. Devolved budgets buy kit, not the experiments that show what is worth buying
- 07
The parts that do not work yet: the gaps, the unsettled arguments, the assumptions still waiting to be tested
A talk, open questions, then drinks and networking at the Everyman.
Anyone working where people, place and technology meet a real problem.
Product managers, designers, user researchers, engineers and data specialists. Public-sector digital, policy and innovation teams. Academics interested in applied research, and regional policymakers.
No prior knowledge of academia, retrofit or policy is needed.
Meet the speakers.
Professor Mark Davis
Professor of Economic Sociology, University of Leeds
Mark led the research behind Local Climate Bonds, which have raised nearly £30 million for council net zero projects, and helps lead the Retrofit Policy Lab.
James Johnson
Co-founder, Lighthouse
James has 25 years in public sector delivery, on the inside as the client and on the outside as the consultant.
Jon Maher
Co-founder, Lighthouse
Jon works across product and service design, user research and test-and-learn methods.
More about the team on the About page.
Come and join us.
Whether you build services, make policy or research either, you will find people in the room working on the same thing you are. Come for the talk, stay for the drinks, and bring whatever you have been chewing on.
Thursday 24 September, 3pm at the Everyman. Free, as part of Leeds Digital Festival.