Current socio-technical imaginaries of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are rooted in speculative fiction - think humanoid robots and glowing brains. These depict AI as an abstract, futuristic phenomenon rather than a ubiquitous element of contemporary life. When the public imagines AI as sentient robots or superintelligence, they often don't recognise everyday AI applications like the recommendation algorithms curating their social media feeds (Leufer et al.; Cave and Dihal; Dihal and Duarte; Singler; Sartori and Bocca).
The Bigger Picture [1] is a participatory art-science initiative in Ireland that counters these narratives by shifting focus from "sci-fi" abstraction towards representations of AI grounded in everyday applications. Through participatory educational workshops (Hu), the project demystifies AI through collaborative inquiry and creative practice.
This paper presents a case study of The Bigger Picture through the lens of knowledge co-production (Jasanoff), examining how participants' experiential knowledge of AI shaped thematic frameworks and visual outputs, generating alternative ways of understanding emerging technologies that challenge established narratives.

The participatory pipeline comprises:
1. Participatory Educational Workshops function as co-production environments where participants explore AI through interactive activities focused on lived experiences. By introducing Explainable AI concepts (Ali et al.) alongside ethical issues such as algorithmic bias (Romele; Dubber et al.), workshops draw on participants' everyday AI experiences - from social media algorithms to voice assistants - as situated knowledge (Haraway) that challenges dominant visual stereotypes (Dihal and Duarte).

2. Thematic Translation: Workshop insights are synthesised into co-produced themes (e.g. AI is All Around Us, AI is Human, AI is Complex) emerging from participant deliberation rather than expert pre-determination. These inform a curated call for artistic submissions reflecting everyday AI rather than sci-fi tropes.

3. Exhibition and Digital Resources: The pipeline culminates in public exhibitions. Selected images are integrated into the Better Images of AI library [2] under a Creative Commons CC4.0 license.
The pipeline generated measurable impact: workshops engaged 79 participants (24 artists/technologists during Science Week [3]; 55 youth participants via Cruinniú na nÓg [4]), and yielded 20 exhibited works viewed by 1,913 visitors. Eleven images entered the Better Images of AI library and have since been reused in 90+ outlets including the Alan Turing Institute and international policy papers, demonstrating how local engagement can lead to open public resources.
The Bigger Picture demonstrates key insights about participatory infrastructure for emerging technologies. First, grounding technologies in everyday experience enabled participants to contribute situated knowledge that experts alone could not generate. Second, translating public insights into creative constraints shaped artistic outputs through collective inquiry. Third, CC licensing transformed ephemeral engagement into durable infrastructure: 90+ reuses suggest participatory projects can generate sustained public value when outputs are contributed to commons. This demonstrates how co-produced research conducted 'in conversation with' publics (Fitzpatrick) can inform engaged scholarship on emerging technologies.

[1] The Bigger Picture: https://thebiggerpictureai.com/
[2] Better Images of AI Image Library: https://betterimagesofai.org/images
[3] Science Week takes place nationwide annually in November Ireland: https://www.scienceweek.ie/
[4] Cruinniú na nÓg is a day of free creativity for young people that takes place nationwide annually in Ireland in June: https://cruinniu.gov.ie/