Technology’s role in decision making has become more prevalent as a result of its ubiquity. Studies on group decision-making technologies within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research exist within a variety of contexts, from civic engagement strategies such as town halls and participatory planning, to ideation and visualization for designers and beyond.

The creative arts act as an interesting domain for studying participatory decision-making. For example, classical music making has evolved to be centrally and hierarchically organized, offering less autonomy/agency to musicians, thus putting some limitations on their creative expression. However, contemporary collaboration in the arts can lend itself to be more socially engaged in grassroots engagement and projects, and decisions made outside of traditional hierarchies are found to be collaboratively creative. In this research, we propose to develop new technology to address the challenge of making collaboration in the creative arts more participatory. Specifically, we will design online platforms which enable collaborative or community arts groups to organize in a “bottom-up” manner, by enabling brainstorming, ideating, deliberating, and visualizing tensions between their values, in collaboration with professional and vocational artists from a multiplicity of domains.