Is Barnsley, the UK’s First Tech Town, a Blueprint or a Pilot?

Tomorrow I’m going to an event in Barnsley so I thought I’d have a look at what it was all about before I got there, some of what I discovered was a bit of a surprise.

The event is called AI and the Future of Young People. The listing describes it as a collaborative open discussion on what AI means for young people’s futures and the future of work. It is organised by AAAI X POP Up Events, and the listing says it is sponsored by AAAI, one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious AI research societies. [10]

The agenda has a session on it called “What pathways actually exist”. As it turns out, that’s the most interesting line on the agenda.

The photograph

The promotional tile carries three logos: the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Loughborough University, and the Inclusive Engineering Excellence Hub. It also has a photograph of the presenter Timipado Imomotebegha standing in front of a board naming the Alan Turing Institute, and it reads: Careers in data science and AI. Defence and National Security.

That is the marketing picture chosen to advertise an open discussion about what AI means for young people’s futures.

Just to be clear, the Alan Turing Institute is not a backer of this event, its logo is not on the tile, it appears on a board in a photograph and that is the whole of it.

The presenter

Timipado is a doctoral researcher at Loughborough University, funded by an Inclusive Engineering Excellence Hub scholarship, her research areas are computational empathy, technical AI governance, and AI safety within human-AI relationships. [9] That is a serious subject and just so happens to be a major area of interest for me.

Alongside the doctorate she is a Data Science Facilitator at the Alan Turing Institute, and in that role she speaks at universities about careers in data science and AI. In March she was at the University of Bradford. The write-up of that talk is headlined on the question she put to the students, which was whether they had considered national defence, and her presentation included advice on applying for careers in national defence agencies. [8]

So the board in the photograph is not a backdrop that just happened to be behind her, it is the talk.

Who knew Barnsley was the UK’s first tech town?

Barnsley was named the UK’s first government-backed Tech Town on 3 February this year by the Technology Secretary, Liz Kendall. [1] It comes with eighteen months of bespoke support from central government, Microsoft, Cisco, Adobe and Google backing the plans, and free AI and digital training for residents through Barnsley College and the South Yorkshire Institute of Technology, all of it sitting inside a national commitment to upskill ten million workers. The Seam Digital Campus and the National Centre for Digital Technologies are both named in the announcement.

A town built on coal is being re-engineered as the national blueprint for AI, with the full weight of the government behind it. Whatever you may think, that’s a serious commitment to a town that got precious little after the pits closed.

What the Alan Turing Institute is now

Now here’s the interesting bit. The Alan Turing Institute is the UK’s national institute for AI and data science, founded in 2015, with core funding of £100 million over five years from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. [3]

On 3 July 2025 the then Secretary of State, Peter Kyle, wrote to the institute’s chair, Doug Gurr. He instructed the institute to prioritise defence, national security and sovereign capabilities, and he said that its current non-defence activity would need to be reoriented to support that focus. [2] He called for changes to the executive team so that its background reflected the new direction, and he noted that the institute’s longer-term funding arrangement could be reconsidered at the 2026 mid-term review. [2] [3]

The institute published its response and confirmed it would step up its work on defence, national security and sovereign capabilities. [4] Its chief executive, Jean Innes, stepped down in September 2025. [5] In February this year the institute appointed Dr George Williamson CMG as its new chief executive, and he took up the post in May. He came from His Majesty’s Government Communications Centre, the national security engineering organisation, where he had been chief executive since 2021. [6]

In August 2025 it was reported that the restructuring was closing or mothballing multiple strands of research, including work on online safety, on housing, health inequality, and on social bias in AI outcomes. Among the projects paused was a study of how AI might affect human rights and democracy. [7]

It was reported eleven months ago and I have not been able to establish what has happened to those projects since, which is worth sitting with for a moment, because AI systems fail at governance, not capability, and the governance work is the work that got paused.

What’s next?

I am not going to tell you what to make of it. All I know until tomorrow is that I’m heading to a free event about what AI means for young people’s futures, in the town the government has chosen as its national blueprint. A promotional photograph in which the careers board reads defence and national security. A presenter who tours universities telling students to consider national defence agencies. A national AI institute that was told to make defence its core or watch its funding get reviewed, whose new chief executive comes from the national security engineering centre, and which paused its study of AI’s impact on human rights and democracy while it did so.

None of that is hidden, it’s all published, mostly on government websites. I’ve just not seen it pulled together, but noticing what a system is actually doing, and containing it before it does it to you, is most of what I do, so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised.

The agenda has a session called “What pathways actually exist”. I will be in that session, and I will be asking. If a career in AI is the future being offered to young people in this country, but most of it is wrapped up as security and defence, what careers are being offered, for what reason and who decided to switch focus from the human side to the defence side?

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References

[1] GOV.UK. Barnsley becomes UK’s first government-backed Tech Town, 3 February 2026. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/barnsley-becomes-uks-first-government-backed-tech-town

[2] Research Professional News. Alan Turing Institute told to focus on defence or lose funding, July 2025. https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-politics-2025-7-alan-turing-institute-told-to-focus-on-defence-or-lose-funding/

[3] PublicTechnology. Tech secretary intervenes to call for defence refocus of Turing Institute, 10 July 2025. https://www.publictechnology.net/2025/07/10/education-and-skills/tech-secretary-intervenes-to-call-for-defence-refocus-of-turing-institute/

[4] The Alan Turing Institute. The Alan Turing Institute responds to Secretary of State letter. https://www.turing.ac.uk/news/alan-turing-institute-responds-secretary-state-letter

[5] Computer Weekly. Alan Turing Institute refocuses on security following Peter Kyle intervention. https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366633598/Alan-Turing-Institute-refocuses-on-security-following-Peter-Kyle-intervention

[6] The Alan Turing Institute. George Williamson joins the Turing as new CEO, 20 May 2026. https://www.turing.ac.uk/news/george-williamson-joins-turing-new-ceo

[7] The Guardian. Dan Milmo, 10 August 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/10/staff-alan-turing-institute-ai-complain-watchdog

[8] West and North Yorkshire Chamber. Turing Institute expert asks Bradford AI students about national defence agencies, March 2026. https://members.wnychamber.co.uk/article/have-you-considered-national-defence-agencies-turing-institute-expert-asks-bradford-ai-students/

[9] Loughborough University. Inclusive Engineering, funded research. https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/clusters/inclusive-engineering/funded-research/

[10] Event listing. AllEvents. https://allevents.in/barnsley/ai-and-the-future-of-young-people/100001992197883498