Outline

FINDHR (Fairness and Intersectional Non-Discrimination in Human Recommendation) is a project funded by the EU framework program Horizon Europe and unites 11 partner organizations all over Europe in developing anti-discrimination methods, algorithms, and training for algorithmic hiring. Algorithmic hiring is the usage of tools based on Artificial intelligence (AI) for finding and selecting job candidates. Like other applications of AI, it is vulnerable to creating and perpetuating discrimination. Our goal is to reach our audience with our results in an engaging way all over Europe and to make our findings live beyond the end of our project (in November 2025). 

FINDHR launches Open Call for Artists Visualization on “Discrimination in Algorithmic Hiring”

What are we looking for?

We are looking for talented artists who bring our findings to life and visualize them to make them accessible to a large public. We are looking for professionals or graduate students who are motivated to: 

• translate our (sometimes) complex concepts into appealing and easily understandable visuals 
• find creative metaphors and create beautiful infographics and inspirational visuals

Concretely, we are looking for the following types of works:

• Task 1. Toolkit design (PDFs and web elements)
  • Task 1.1. Design and layout for our toolkits, which will be 3 documents in the order of approximately 20–25 pages each, plus one online website featuring parts of these documents.
  • Task 1.2. Infographics (about 5–8 infographics, exact number TBD) explaining qualitative and quantitative findings of our research in an attractive and easily understandable manner
• Task 2. Inspirational visualizations (about 5–7 illustrations, exact number TBD): We are looking for inspiring images that translate ideas into, for instance, metaphors related to our research. Like “Algorithmic recruiting is like a road where there are discrimination risks at various junctions” (other examples to come)
• Task 3: Visuals for promotion (about 6–8 visuals adapted for different channels) of our findings and reports on Social Media, Websites, and Newsletters.

Artists are welcome to bid on one, two, or all three tasks. We can imagine working either with one artist for all three tasks or launching different collaborations with multiple artists. 

What do we offer?

The chance to work on an important topic at the cutting edge will keep us busy for a long time to come. The opportunity to work with committed partners in academia and civil society organizations from various European countries and make new contacts. Your work will be distributed and promoted through our large network all over Europe. We have been granted a specific amount of funds for this as part of our EU-funded project. 

Timing:

Final Deadline for application: 8th of March 2024

We will get back to you by the 20th of March 2024.

Once we set up our agreement, we would like to get down to work soon. It would be great if you were free to work in April and May 2024. The first final deliverable is due by the beginning of June 2024. 

If our first collaboration fits both of us, the idea is to work together in intervals until June 2025. We have half-yearly deadlines for submission to the project commission. 

The next possible intervals are:

• October – December 2024
• April – June 2025

You can ask the questions at the Information Session (online): on Monday, 26th of February 2024 at 4 pm (sign up here).

Requirements:

• Applicants must be eligible to participate in public contracting according to the legislation of their country, be able to provide an EU-tax number and produce an invoice for UPF.
• They must provide a responsible declaration with UPF to accept this assignment when applying. Also, the applicants must be able to sign a contract with UPF and provide other documents needed (asked by UPF) for payment after the work is delivered.
• FINDHR consortium partners, their affiliates, employees, or permanent collaborators are not eligible for funding within this open call.
• Applicants are willing to make the specific work you deliver within this project available under an open content license (e.g., Creative Commons).

All FINDHR- publications, data, graphs, and visualizations will be open-source and royalty-free. So will be the artistic work you provide for the project. Your name and company will always be credited.

Budget: 

We are publicly funded by Horizon Europe so we have a strictly defined budget available for our collaboration(s) with artists of a total of 15 000 euros for the three tasks (until June 2025). Artists can bid on one, two, or all three tasks, and should provide a breakdown of costs per task. We envision that Task 1 is the one that will require more effort, followed by Task 2, while Task 3 is likely to require less effort than Task 2. 

Please hand in an estimated budget for what seems realistic for you to produce in this budget frame. Please be as specific as possible and declare how much you estimate for each task and sub-task.

We are aware that it is difficult to draw up a concrete budget based on this relatively vague information. The idea behind this is to be able to assess whether we can both imagine working together within this budget.

As soon as we decide to work together, we will draw up an agreement in which the budget will be more clearly defined. It cannot exceed the allocated total, though.

More about us:

FINDHR aims to create new ways to ascertain discrimination risk in algorithmic hiring, produce less biased outcomes, and meaningfully incorporate human expertise. Moreover, it aims to create procedures for software development, monitoring, and training. The project’s publications, software, courseware, and datasets will be made freely available to the public under free and open licenses. We also develop workshops and a Toolkit, which give introductory insights into some of our most important findings. We want these resources to be visually engaging and captivating. That’s why we are looking for inspiring collaboration(s) with talented artists and designers. Find out more about FINDHR here.

How can you apply?

Please prepare a letter explaining your work and motivation, a brief portfolio containing 2-3 projects or campaigns you’ve been working on and examples of your artistic work (illustrations, visualizations, animations, etc.), as well as a budget estimation. Please note that you will have to sign and upload a responsible statement to declare that you are eligible to apply in the process. The document is available directly in our application form.                         

To apply please fill out our application form by the 8th of March 2024 here.

Any questions? For any questions or further information, sign up for the information session (26th of February at 4 pm) or contact us anytime: daviet@algorithmwatch.ch