Tactical Tech Studio designs and co-develops playful and forward-looking experiences, interventions, events, and self-learning resources that invite people to think about how technology influences their lives and changes the world they live in. The Tactical Tech Studio is affiliated with landmark projects such as The Glass Room, the Data Detox Kit, What the Future Wants, and the Digital Enquirer Kit that promote critical thinking about technology and its socio-political and environmental impacts. These resources are centered on collaborative methods, research, and iterative development.

The Tactical Tech Studio team has worked together to produce resources, build community, and support partnerships around the globe. Studio scales projects into impactful interventions by partnering with local organizations that use and adapt them to engage their communities. This article will spotlight the inspiring interventions from just a few of our partners. Check out their creative and unique adaptations, the tailored events and trainings they have organized and some of the ways they are championing media literacy in their communities. Most of the partnerships featured in this piece were possible thanks to generous funding and support from Sida.

Tactical Tech has had many partnerships over the years, each with their own unique interests and contexts. They often relate to broad categories:

• Hosting Partnerships: These partners organize exhibitions, events, workshops, and other creative interventions with readily available Tactical Tech resources, sometimes with necessary translations and local additions. These activities succeed because of the expertise of our partners in event programming, instruction, engagement methodologies, and community outreach.
• Contextualization Partnerships: These partners often focus on adapting Tactical Tech resources to become more relevant for local audiences, beyond direct translations, with more hands-on work through localization or creative adaptations of existing contents. These activities succeed because of the expertise of our partners in creative re-imaginings, transformative content development, and community engagement.
• Innovation Partnerships: These partners take adaptations to a new level by creating unique resources that have been inspired or informed by Tactical Tech resources, but that are so different from the source material that they may not seem related at first glance. These activities succeed because of the expertise of our partners in development, design, content creation, and subject-matter proficiency.

Let’s take a closer look at examples of each type of partnership, and celebrate the work of these partners together.

Tactical Tech’s intervention materials are modular and adaptable, which makes it possible for partners to use the resources in ways that they see best fit — experimentation is encouraged. Different formats have been designed to reduce barriers partners may face, for example, the cost and access to printers, space constraints, and experience in hosting interventions. Some partners choose to train facilitators and exhibition guides while others prefer it to be a self-learning experience.

Thydêwá, an Indigenist NGO working in the Brazilian Northeast, initiated an Indigenous study group, to review the resources on misinformation and create their own survey to measure the visitors knowledge about the topic before and after the exhibition. In addition, they felt it was helpful to have a facilitator available at the event to guide visitors, who weren’t used to visiting exhibitions by asking thought-provoking questions and contextualizing the content to their everyday.

A core part of the public engagement and intervention initiatives across the intersecting projects of The Glass Room, What the Future Wants, and the Data Detox Kit involves developing, testing, and implementing learning programs. While there are many types of learning programs, we tend to lean away from top-down teaching (which implies there is one expert imparting knowledge on students) and toward interactive workshops, trainings-of-trainers, peer-to-peer sessions and co-creative processes. Generally speaking, our primary objectives with learning programs is to engage audiences and encourage critical thinking, therefore more collaborative and interactive environments with space for discussions and reflections are the most effective ways we can reach those goals.

The Data Detox Kit’s workshop outlines have been tested and developed over time on topics relating to data privacy, digital safety, online wellbeing, and tackling misinformation. What the Future Wants’ workshop outlines, including co-creation sessions, have been tested internationally with young people of various ages and have contributed greatly to create digital and media literacy resources to foster more critical conversations on tech and society. One such example are the co-creation session workshops How Tech Shapes Our Future which encourages young people to explore, reflect on, and react to artificial intelligence (AI), gaming, or influence and What Matters to Us which invites young people to reflect their place in the community and the world, identifying the issues that matter to them.

Anyone is invited to use the workshops outlines to supplement wider learning programs, and encouraged to adapt the contents to the needs and interests of the participants. The workshop outlines include the lesson plan, learning objectives, as well as facilitator tips and variation ideas, in hopes of encouraging educators (including teachers, librarians, community leaders) to adjust the session to their exact specifications—whether that be online or offline, shorter or longer sessions, and different age groups and languages. The workshop outlines are intentionally designed to be conducted by facilitators who are not subject-matter experts and not necessarily confident about technology. The sessions are designed with non-formal and informal learning settings in mind, therefore people who are motivated to lead a session but who are not necessarily professional facilitators or career educators can also use the workshop outlines with ease. The workshop sub-sections and activities encourage self-reflection, ethical discussions, and cross-applicable skills such as critical thinking.

The co-creation workshops have been held by several organizations working with youth to collect inputs that informed the Everywhere, All the Time exhibition. Among other things, we’ve learned how technology has provided teenagers the opportunity to explore their interests, find community and learning experiences but also the concerns they have about tech eroding human-to-human relationships and impacting their mental health. We also learned about how keen they are to understand how different technologies actually work and the different ways they impact society. A partner that has contributed to this process has been Yusuf Ganyana, a librarian based in Kenya. During the development phase of Everywhere, All the Time, besides conducting the co-creation workshop What Matters to Us, Yusuf ran a series of testing workshop to assess language and design of draft version of what would become Everywhere, All the Time exhibition. The testing workshops and feedback from Yusuf gave the Tactical Tech team valuable insights that propelled them to adjust the framing and word choices before the launch of the exhibition in 2024. Throughout the years, Yusuf has also tested and adapted several Data Detox Kit and WTFW workshops providing detailed feedback from its implementation while at the same running a re-purposing program to provide digital devices to young people from underprivileged socio-economic backgrounds. He has also developed and conducted workshops through Digital You, an initiative between Goethe-Instituts across Sub-Saharan Africa and Tactical Tech.

When paired with greater digital and media literacy interventions, such as exhibition materials, the workshops emerge as a central meeting place to dive deeper into the topics proposed in the posters. Workshops are meant to be open-yet-guided places of exploration, discussion, and sharing, oftentimes with no single right answer. Workshops can be used for processing complex information, capacity-building, and collaboration. In this sense several partners with ongoing digital and media literacy programs and interventions in their communities have relied on The Glass Room, Data Detox Kit and What the Future Wants resources to further expand their work and outreach. One example is Ubunteam, an NGO working to promote open source software and digital inclusion in Ivory Coast. They’ve translated several Tactical Tech resources and have implemented several training programs and workshops as part of their strategy to build a community of citizens knowledgeable on topics concerning digital privacy and security that can further support conversations in the country around these topics. Ubunteam have also conducted workshops through Digital You.

Partners like the International Young Catholic Students (IYCS) through their Africa office have implemented a multi-country peer-to-peer program for teens to train them to host and run digital and media literacy activities with their peers. Taking stock of their structure of IYCS-Africa country and local school groups, in 2023 the organization hosted an initial training for young multipliers from three countries (Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Zambia) and then support them to host creative interventions and conduct trainings for their peers. A similar approach has been taken by Policy Lab in Nigeria. They have conducted several workshops based of The Glass Room and What the Future Wants in different university campus as side events to hosting exhibitions to build capacity of young people to be multipliers for digital literacy in their communities and among their peers.

In order to reach the widest impact with workshops, Tactical Tech offers training-of-trainers (ToT) in order to train educators on an agreed upon program of sessions to also build their capacity to continue scaling these initiatives further, wider, and in more languages and contexts. ToTs have been given to partners as well as to select staff and affiliates of globally recognized organizations, such as Goethe-Institut, Save the Children, and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA).

Cauce Ciudadano, a Mexican organization working to build a more resilient a sustainable community in the periphery of Mexico City, expanded the What the Future Wants: Debut Edition. Since the organization already runs a Fab Lab, they designed a training program ahead of the exhibition and challenged the group of young participants to produce their own art objects based on their understanding of the impact of tech in their community. The training consisted in a six workshops mixing digital fabrication labs and workshops inspired on WTFW content where each participant had to produce an art piece to feature in the exhibition. Participants created 13 new pieces and Cauce Ciudadano hosted an open exhibition to the community where What the Future Wants: Debut Edition was hosted alongside the art pieces developed by young people resulting in a complete new framing of the content.

Partners from around the world have generously shared their methodologies as well, in order to promote professional development and capacity building across the partnership and with other educators. A remarkable example is Casa Hacker, a Brazilian NGO based in São Paulo. Through their partnership with Tactical Tech, they’ve build a model of in-person and online training-of-trainers program to build the capacity of educators (including teachers, youth workers, cultural animators) to host and run digital literacy events for teens based on What the Future Wants resources. The program includes inviting educators to reflect upon their own relationship with technology and their understanding of how tech impacts society as well as providing strategies and methods to engage youth critically in conversations concerning their digital lives. To learn more about their trainings program, please check out their GitHub page that includes the architecture of their trainings with concrete tips.

Translation is often one of the first steps we take in our partnerships to make our resources accessible to more people. Our resources exist in so many languages thanks to partners, our network of translators and volunteers. On The Glass Room and What the Future Wants translation page, the team has outlined what translations exist from their materials; there are even more languages available for the Data Detox Kit. In addition to one-to-one translation, some resources are further localized. Localization is the process of adapting materials to specific linguistic, cultural, demographic, or regional contexts. Sometimes the extra step of localizing makes all the difference for resources to feel more relevant to audiences.

Our partners have also adapted content - ranging from transforming, remixing, to redesigning to complete put the content in a new format or communication channel.

Tactical Tech resources are designed to discuss cross-cutting topics on tech and society in a way that can resonate with various audiences no matter who they are or where they are. Nevertheless, the relevance and angle of the topics and the way they intersect can widely differ. Thus, Tactical Tech often welcomes partners to remix and transform the contents into formats that can better serve the needs of their communities. Adaptations usually derive from partnerships where the local partner is able to leverage their expertise and skills to transform the resources in a way that better supports the mission they are seeking to accomplish with their audience. The act of contextualizing materials usually involve some level of new design, a reframing of the topics through expansion or reduction of certain elements, and remixing of different content into a new resource. Conversely, adaptations expands Tactical Tech own understanding of the way different communities experience different topics - observations that inform future resources.

The Glass Room’s poster A Data Day looks at the kinds of terms and conditions one might accept as they scroll through their phone. The original 'A Data-Day in London' was created for the Glass Room. It was updated in May 2018 for a more international audience prior to the General Data Protection Regulation's enforcement date, and again in January 2021.

In 2021, a partner in Indonesia called the House of Natural Fiber surveyed people in the local community on their most-used apps, researched the terms and conditions of popular apps, and translated and contextualized the poster for their audiences in Yogyakarta. Although it had the same visual design as the original, the contents were completely bespoke to the local audiences.

Tactical Tech later reformatted the original poster as a video animation, a great medium to present information in an engaging and condensed way. Animations are also great for young people and can be shown in classrooms. The Glass Room has produced various video animations based on posters.

Other partners used the same template to create a blank poster to be used in workshops about the terms and conditions in popular Swedish apps, as is seen in the image below. A group of Swedish libraries worked together to test this workshop out and reported high engagement by the visitors.

Another noteworthy example of partner localization is the poster Your Phone Number is Not Only Yours. It was produced by partners Shweta Mohandas and Saumyaa Naidu from the Centre of Internet & Society (CIS) in collaboration with Tactical Tech. The poster looks at how phone ID’s are exchanged by third-party services in India. The original is contextualized for Indian audiences and the services they will likely come across.

Policy Lab Africa in Nigeria localized the poster to fit an African context. They researched the most used apps and services locally, changed the colors and selected characters they felt would better represent different religions and demographics.

Sometimes, partners create something completely new. In the past, we’ve seen inspiring content like posters, videos, radio shows, and handbooks developed by our partners with and for their communities.

Tecnicas Rudas, a Mexican organization that was also responsible for translating What the Future Wants Exhibition: Debut Edition into Spanish, considered that the topics around biometric technologies, surveillance, privacy, and security were particularly important. Therefore, they decided to go a step forward and adapt part of the exhibition to highlight these topics. They designed and launched a zine for teens called “Ladrones de rostros” (Thieves of Faces) inspired by What the Future Wants: Debut Edition poster set “The Real Life of Your Selfie” and by the Data Detox Kit x Youth chapters on privacy and security.

Tecnicas Rudas also produced a music video called “¡¡Qué amigable, qué bonito!!“ that invites listeners to question their relationship with smartphones and the implications for their lives and communities.

Cecilia Maundu, a partner in Kenya, was inspired by Data Detox Kit content to inform episodes on digital privacy, security, and wellbeing as part of her successful podcast Digital Dada. Radio Tosepan in Mexico produced a radio show consisting in facilitated discussions with the Masepal Commmunity about the different ways technology is impacting the indigenous communities, particularly concerning digital privacy, security, combat misinformation and building resilience to technological impact. The Fabulous Woman Network in Ghana have developed multiple series of videos inspired by Data Detox Kit contents through Data Detox and Digital You partnerships.

data_labe, a Brazilian organization based in Rio de Janeiro that works with citizen investigation and data visualization to support popular communities, partnered with us for their project Respira / Breathe. data_labe designed a poster exhibition of the Data Detox Kit adding visual elements connected to Afro-Brazilian symbolism to better communicate the concepts and learnings from Data Detox Kit. Their team of designers felt the materials were best redesigned to be able to truly contextualise them with symbolism, colours and deeper narratives which their communities would relate to. The poster exhibition debuted at their Criptofunk Festival.

The Centre for Media Research Nepal is an autonomous, research and policy driven, non-profit NGO based in Kathmandu. In 2023, they published सचेत बनौँ: सूचना र प्रविधिको सही प्रयोग (Sachet Banau: Correct Use of Information and Technology), a much needed resource for educators and students alike. The handbook has adapted content from Tactical Tech Studio projects, as well as featured tips from our flagship project Security-in-a-Box. The book is colorful, visually catching and includes illustrations from a local artist. CMR Nepal used the handbook to train educators on digital media literacy topics, and students receive the handbook in class. By the end of 2023, over 3,000 copies were printed and distributed - and still today, the handbook is used as an essential educational tools in schools all over Nepal.

Causas Digitales, a digital initiative by JAAKLAC that works with youth in Latin America and the Caribbean, co-developed a social media campaign with young people as part of their partnership. Alongside young people and digital rights groups from different countries in Latin American, they created the Data Detox Datos Latine, a saga for social media to raise awareness about digital privacy and well-being inspired by Data Detox x Youth on social media. While Data Detox x Youth is an activity book, the social media campaign by Causas Digitales consists of sets of social media visuals with storylines of different characters , each of them focusing on a topic covered by the Data Detox x Youth and from the experiences of participants with technology.

Causas Digitales ran a series of co-creation workshops to develop the storylines and content. This adaptation to a new format and communication channel allowed Causas Digitales to reach their audience through social media with a content that was originally designed to be fully analogue.

These are just a few of the many remarkable partners we have connected and collaborated with. Tactical Tech’s creative interventions provide a lot of space for individuals, collectives, civil society organizations to use resources as an entry point to foster discussions and build capacity. The resources are also useful launching pads to create a local discourse and narrative around the intersections of tech in society in a specific context.

The work with our partners is crucial to fulfill our mission since they understand better the way digital technologies are impacting their communities, the challenges and opportunities it presents and therefore are in a better position to make meaningful, sustainable, and lasting impacts through their work. In order to encourage the scaling of our resources, they are launched under Creative Commons licenses which promote accessibility and facilitates the possibilities of partners localize and adapt the materials to their contexts. A large majority of this content has been published over CC licenses ranging from CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International to CC BY-ND.

By acknowledging and respecting that our partners are the experts of their own contexts and lived experiences, the Tactical Tech Studios team actively attempts to not impose their beliefs and perspectives and to instead open the door for interpretation and localization as the partners see most suitable to their needs and contexts. As a result, there is a significant advancement in the quality of the output of the collaborative efforts with partners. A recurring element of Tactical Tech methodology is a willingness to be open. The magnitude of partners that engage with the content are geographically, socially, economically, diverse. In this context, Tactical Tech encourages a constructively critical discourse around methodologies, content, language, etc.

This approach has also opened the door for Tactical Tech to learn from its partners and be able to embed into its own work these learning which ultimately results in outputs that will resonate with wider and diverse audiences across the globe.

Safeguarding and privacy are promoted by Tactical Tech Studios, not only as a means for partners to implement with end-users (especially with those working with young people and vulnerable adults), but also for the Studio team to implement in their partnership work. The diversity of the Studio team, along with structured internal processes ensures a series of ‘checks and balances’ are reflected in all aspects of partnership recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, communication, and support, to the best of their abilities and capacities.

A critical element to the start of working in a partnership involves several collaborative sessions with the partners where they are introduced to the content. Where possible, onboarding sessions would be collective, with multiple partners from across different organizations and regions joining at once. Although the partnership guidebook is asynchronously helpful for partners to plan, organise, and host a standard event, there is an added benefit of synchronously onboarding the partners with more context, and opening the space for discussing ideas together when the partnership is more creative or involved.

Typically, before partners begin a project, Tactical Tech Studios sends the materials to them for review. Afterwards, a session is planned where the Tactical Tech team presents the materials in depth to partners. This provides an opportunity to hear from the creators of the content about various elements in the research and design process that led to the final choices. Many times, there are small nuances to each of the objects that may be easily overlooked and that context can enrich the host’s engagement with visitors.

During the partner’s onboarding, other key topics are discussed including: safeguarding and risk assessments (especially when working with younger or otherwise vulnerable audiences); privacy tips; other Tactical Tech projects; funders supporting the project; an opportunity for partners to present themselves and their work; tips on measuring impact.

When we have a significant number of partners condensed within a certain region, we facilitate the formation of a cluster as part of a strategic approach to maximizing our work with partners and building networks. Convenings are a great opportunity for cross-partnerships to be nurtured. In the past few years, we have held convenings for partners in Latin America (in Spanish and Portuguese) and in Sub-Saharan Africa (in English with live French-English interpretation).

Partners have shown their passion and dedication to Tactical Tech’s goals and almost always exceed our expectations in the most innovative and creative ways. After a cohort of partnerships submit their final reports of activities, the Studios team, among other project teams at Tactical Tech, invites the wider network of current and previous partners to a session where they can highlight and recognize the work. The celebration achieves several objectives including:

• Acknowledgment of our partners’ outstanding contributions to the sector.
• Highlighting the innovative outcomes of partners demonstrating flexibility and creativity to adapt resources to their audiences and context.
• Providing ideas for the wider network of partners to continue their work, even if funding is no longer available.
• Offering former partners a chance to stay involved and inspired by new innovative ideas.

You can see a few of the past celebrations of partnerships documented on these pages:

• The Glass Room and What the Future Wants: Capsule Edition 3.0
• Digital You: Creating a movement around digital and media literacy in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Data Detox Kit: Partnerships Showcase

Alongside these collective showcases, we regularly produce impact story pieces on the Tactical Tech website featuring a specific partnership, highlighting the stories, methods, and learnings. The impact stories not only celebrate the work and community impact of partners but are also an excellent opportunity for knowledge sharing.

In 2024, the What the Future Wants project piloted a knowledge exchange webinar series where partners were invited to lead online sessions about their pedagogical approach, scaling model as a way for partners to share directly their knowledge, and learnings from running critical media and digital literacy interventions.

You can read more about the methodology behind the development of some of our projects, as well as the outcomes:

• Co-creating a public education intervention: a contextual analysis
• Co-creation as methodology for uncertain times: practice, learnings, and findings
• Digital and media literacy education: navigating an ever-evolving landscape
• An assessment of the needs of educators and youth in Europe for digital and media literacy education intervention

Keep an eye out for future opportunities to partner with us!