Artificial Intelligence & Creative Integrity
Technology should support creativity — not replace it.
Circle & Star is a venue built by and for artists — performers, musicians, writers, designers, photographers, filmmakers, and the craftspeople whose fingerprint is on everything an audience feels but can’t name. Our concern has never been with AI as a tool. It is with the replacement of human creative practice.
There is room for AI. It is an exciting new tool. We need to use it responsibly — and collectively set the standards.
At a glance
We welcome AI as a tool inside a human-led process
- Editing, retouching, compositing, restoration, upscaling, content-aware fill
- Research, copy refinement, and visual experimentation
- AI built into professional software — Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, Firefly
We won’t ordinarily use work that is primarily AI-generated
- Posters, key art, publicity photography and marketing where the principal creative contribution came from a text prompt
- Anything presented as finished, human-authored work when it isn’t
The distinction that matters
AI-assisted workflows are entirely acceptable where they form part of a wider process directed by a creative practitioner. The tool serves the maker. That is craft, and we support it.
What we set apart is the finished piece generated primarily from a prompt and presented as original creative work. Audiences are increasingly able to tell the difference, and they respond to authorship — to the sense that a real person made a deliberate choice. We would rather invest in the people who bring it.
There is a practical cost, too. Prompt-generated images tend to resist the ordinary demands of a professional workflow — reformatting, refinement, a small change of text — and often create more work rather than less. Original assets, made by someone who can adjust them, hold up.
What we ask
If you are bringing a show to Circle & Star, we ask that promotional and editorial materials originate from genuine human authorship. Commission a designer, a photographer, an illustrator. Use AI freely to sharpen and finish that work — but let the creative contribution be a person’s.
Where AI has played a significant role in an asset you’d like us to use, tell us. We’ll always talk it through rather than turn it away unseen — write to hello@circleandstar.com.
Our commitment
Circle & Star remains committed to investing in and showing the work of creative professionals — and to keeping artists at the centre of the cultural work we present. This is a new tool and a shared responsibility. We would rather help set the standard than pretend the question away.