ACM FAccT 2025 Call for CRAFT Proposals

Themes

CRAFT sessions are expected to move beyond critique alone, fostering transdisciplinary exchange and community-led approaches that open new directions for research, practice, and collective action. The themes below are offered as starting points rather than an exhaustive list. We particularly welcome proposals grounded in perspectives often underrepresented at FAccT, including those informed by indigeneity, coloniality, feminist and gender politics, disability justice, environmental justice, Majority World contexts, and religious or faith-based traditions.

1. Critiquing and Rethinking FAccT and AI Knowledge Practices
   Interrogations of the assumptions, limits, and power relations embedded in dominant approaches to fairness, accountability, transparency, and AI ethics, including alternative epistemologies, methods, and forms of refusal.
2. Algorithmic Harms, Resistance, and Counter-Power
   Work addressing algorithmic harms alongside practices of resistance, repair, refusal, and counter-power, grounded in local experiences and participatory or community-led methodologies.
3. World-Building and Imagined Sociotechnical Futures
   Applied or speculative work exploring how computing and AI might operate in more just, livable, or liberated worlds, emphasizing governance, design, and participation beyond academia and large technology firms.
4. Data, Governance, and Collective Accountability
   Analyses of alternative data governance and accountability models, such as worker data collectives, community audits, platform oversight, and collective forms of decision-making.
5. Environmental, Social, and Material Impacts of Computing
   Examinations of the environmental, social, and legal consequences of computing systems, particularly for systemically impacted communities and ecologies.
6. Law, Policy, and Power in Global Contexts
   Legal, regulatory, and governance analyses that foreground power, resistance, and territorial context, with particular attention to Majority World perspectives.
7. Militarism, Surveillance, and State Violence
   Critical engagements with the roles of computational systems in warfare, policing, border regimes, surveillance, and other forms of state violence.

Guidelines for Contributions

CRAFT welcomes contributions in a wide range of participatory, experimental, and community-oriented formats that foreground collectivity, imagination, and shared responsibility for the sociotechnical futures we are creating. These may include, but are not limited to:

• Interactive workshops
• Experimental tutorials
• Panels and fishbowl dialogues
• Unconferences
• Lightning talks
• Poster and/or demo sessions
• Local community engagements or site visits
• Art exhibits or other artistic interventions
• Games, simulations, or other speculative formats
• Cross-disciplinary dialogues (e.g., among policymakers, data scientists, historians, advocates)

Our goal is to foster collective engagement and community-building throughout the conference. We especially encourage proposals that bring together participants from different disciplinary, epistemological, institutional, or community backgrounds, or that introduce new movements, organizations, or forms of practice into the FAccT community.

Remote Participation

CRAFT sessions may be in-person, online-only, or hybrid. At present, capacity to support hybrid sessions with remote presenters is limited and may not meet demand. We therefore encourage in-person or online-only sessions where possible.

Organizers of in-person sessions may apply separately for travel support, subject to availability. If you plan to include remote participation, please clearly describe your proposed setup and technical needs in the submission.

Further details regarding virtual participation, recording, and accessibility accommodations will be announced at a later date. Please contact us for any questions.

Recording

Please note that recording of CRAFT sessions is optional and may not be available for all sessions. Organizers may indicate their preference regarding recording in the application. In some cases, sessions may not be recorded due to format, participant safety, or technical constraints.

Proposal Requirements

Proposals should be submitted via EasyChair and should include sufficient detail to allow for careful evaluation. Submissions should be clear, well-structured, and complete.

Proposals should be no more than 4 pages (excluding references) or an equivalent length, and may be submitted in PDF format. We do not require adherence to a specific ACM template; submissions may use any readable layout or formatting.

Proposals that involve local communities and non-academic forms of engagement are especially encouraged. Prior conference experience or institutional affiliation is not required.

Each submission should include:

• Title
  A clear and descriptive title for the session.
• Session Format and Modality
  Indicate the proposed format (e.g., workshop, unconference, artistic intervention, game, site visit) and whether the session will be in-person, online-only, or hybrid.
• Description (up to 500 words)
  A description of the session’s focus, central questions, and structure. This text will serve as the public-facing description for conference attendees. Proposals should clearly articulate the participatory, experiential, or community-oriented design of the session.
• Goals and Collective Outcomes
  What is the session trying to achieve? What kinds of reflection, dialogue, or action should participants leave with? How does the session support collective inquiry, inclusion, or world-building?
• Organizers and Facilitators
  Please list the session organizer(s), including names, affiliations (if any), and roles in the session. You may optionally indicate a country, region, or transnational context of work, if relevant. You may also include brief context about the perspectives, experiences, or communities that inform the session’s design, participation or facilitation.
• Session Length and Audience
  Preferred session length (60 minutes, 2 hours, or 3 hours) and anticipated or ideal number of participants. Schedule availability is limited and preferred session lengths may not be able to be offered to every CRAFT.
• Participation and Access Needs
  Any requirements related to online participation, accessibility, translation, care, or other accommodations.
• Additional Materials (optional)
  Links to relevant materials such as facilitation plans, prior iterations, example activities, websites, or other artifacts that may support the proposal.

To submit your proposal, use this link: LINK

Note on Cross-Track Review of CRAFT and Tutorials

In addition to CRAFT, ACM FAccT solicits proposals for the Tutorials track, which emphasizes educational, dialogue, implications, and practice-oriented sessions. Some proposals submitted to the CRAFT Call may align more closely with the goals or format of the Tutorials track, and conversely. In such cases, the CRAFT and Tutorial Co-Chairs may coordinate with authors to review proposals under the most appropriate track.

Evaluation Criteria

CRAFT is curated by the CRAFT Co-Chairs in consultation with the FAccT Organizing Committee. Selection is based on assembling a balanced, diverse, and generative program, with attention to both individual proposal quality and how proposals work together as a collective.

Furthermore, we aim to support the participation of organizers and contributors who are local to the conference location or working closely with local communities, including registration waivers or travel support, subject to available funding.

Submissions will be evaluated along the following dimensions:

1. Planning and Facilitation Quality: Is the proposal clear, well-structured, and feasible? Does it demonstrate thoughtful facilitation design, including how participants will be engaged, how collective inquiry will be supported, and how the session format aligns with its goals?
2. Contribution, Critical Depth, and Rethinking Practice: Is the session likely to generate meaningful discussion, collective reflection, or experimentation that challenges and rethinks dominant ways of understanding, designing, or governing computing and AI? Does it engage power, harm, and responsibility with rigor, and, where appropriate, consider alternative futures, arrangements, or collective practices grounded in lived experiences and real-world contexts?
3. Broadening, Inclusion, and Critical Perspective: Does the proposal center or meaningfully engage with perspectives, experiences or forms of knowledge-making that are underrepresented in the main conference track? Does it challenge dominant assumptions, redistribute voice or authority or create space for participation by communities and practices not typically foregrounded at FAccT?

CRAFT Co-Chairs

Please contact craft@facctconference.org with any questions.

• Ishtiaque Ahmed, University of Toronto
• Skylee-Storm Hogan-Stacey, First Nations Information Governance Centre
• Levent Sagun, Meta FAIR
• Yashwinie Shivanand, Environment and Climate Change Canada