Work with Us – Open Future

Open Future works with organisations that need to make strategic decisions about how AI, platform power and changing EU rules affect their mission: libraries, archives and other cultural heritage institutions, open knowledge communities, foundations and public bodies. Alongside our own policy and research work, we take on commissioned projects for organisations whose goals align with ours.

We are most useful where a question cuts across technology, legal frameworks and institutional practice, where several stakeholders need to be consulted and brought along, and where the policy environment is still moving. Typical questions include: how should a library make its collections available for AI development? What does the EU’s copyright and AI framework mean for an open knowledge project? What would a shared, publicly governed infrastructure need to become viable?

We support partners with:

Research and analysis: policy analysis and feasibility studies, including on the legal frameworks that shape our partners’ options
Convening: designing and facilitating roundtables, workshops and stakeholder consultations
Strategy development: helping organisations turn analysis into a position, a plan or a pilot

We take on commissions where there is strong alignment between our goals and those of our partners. We work as an independent partner: we agree at the outset on scope and on how results will be published, and we only put our name to conclusions we stand behind. Commissions above €15,000 are always listed on our transparency page.

Recent work

Cover of the report Collective intelligence vs artificial intelligence

The knowledge commons in the age of AI (2025–2026)

Together with Wikimedia CH we developed a strategy for the knowledge commons in the age of AI. We helped design a roundtable (see the report Collective intelligence vs artificial intelligence), interviewed key stakeholders in the Wikimedia movement, and ran further workshops and convenings. The work resulted in the white paper “Wikimedia, the commons, and the new AI knowledge loop”, which supports Wikimedia CH’s efforts to develop an AI strategy for the Wikimedia movement.

Cover of the European Books Data Commons feasibility study

A European Books Data Commons (2026)

The National Library of the Netherlands (KB) and the Europeana Foundation commissioned us to carry out a feasibility study for a European Books Data Commons: a resource making public domain books from European libraries available for research and AI development. We assessed the technical, legal, governance and financial requirements and consulted libraries across Europe. The study set out a realistic path for building such a resource; a pilot with national libraries is now in development.

Cover of the European Heritage Hub policy paper Beyond adopter and supplier

Public AI and cultural heritage (2026)

The Europeana Foundation asked us to support the cultural heritage sector in developing its position on AI. Our input paper “AI, cultural heritage, and the public interest” applied our Public AI framework to the sector and fed into the white paper The case for Public AI: making it happen with cultural heritage, published in June 2026. We then turned this vision into concrete policy proposals in Beyond adopter and supplier: putting cultural heritage at the heart of Europe’s Public AI ecosystem, written for the European Heritage Hub as the sector’s input to the EU’s AI strategy for the cultural and creative sectors.

Is your organisation facing a similar strategic question? Get in touch at hello@openfuture.eu.