WE! Governance Principles

Our North Star

Purpose: To ensure that all decisions, growth strategies, partnerships, and operations reflect our North Star, being to fostering authentic cultural engagement, preserving trust, and prioritising lived experience.

1. Experience-Centric Principle

All product, content, and operational decisions prioritise the quality and authenticity of user experience.

Users' reflections, observations, and experiences are treated as primary data, not as a vehicle for attention or monetisation.

All design and feature enhancements must support meaningful reflection and participation.

2. Transparency Principle

All organisational policies, partnerships, and sponsorships must be clear, visible, and easily understandable to users.

Any paid features, sponsorships, or advertising are explicitly identified.

User data is never monetised without explicit consent.

Advertisers do not influence, in any way, the display or presentation of events or user experiences.

3. Non-Commercial Bias Principle

WE! avoids monetising attention, engagement, or content visibility.

4. Plurality and Inclusion Principle

Every perspective is valid; multiple user experiences for the same event are retained, visible, and non-hierarchical.

WE! promotes equitable representation across:

• geographic locations
• events (major events to local pop-ups)
• emerging and established artists

Governance decisions must consider diversity, inclusion, and accessibility.

5. Integrity Principle

The organisation maintains consistency between stated values and operational practice.

Ethical and moral commitments (we do not engage in manipulative tracking, algorithmic bias, or commodified attention).

Any deviation from core principles must be formally reviewed by leadership and documented with justification.

6. Sustainable Growth Principle

WE! seeks to grow in an organic manner, aligned with community engagement and cultural value rather than profit maximization.

Decisions about scaling, expansion, or use of technology must protect trust and authenticity.

Resource allocation (staff, tech, hosting) is planned to ensure long-term self-sufficiency without compromising core values.

7. Agency Principle

Governance structures respect user autonomy, privacy, and creative expression.

Any introduction of new features or policies must respect existing user agency.

8. Stewardship Principle

WE! acts as a custodian of cultural memory, preserving ephemeral experiences in a way that respects the moment and the contributor.

Decisions about partnerships, technology, and content retention must prioritize cultural value over short-term revenue.

Leadership is accountable to both users and cultural partners, ensuring long-term sustainability and trust.

9. Governance

WE! takes governance seriously. We go beyond a simple governance policy and have embedded a governance process into the WE! app.

This governance process is designed to create a safe online space for users, protect user data from misuse, ensure traceability of decisions and actions within WE! and provide a defensible response to audit.