Where these came from
The Manchester Principles started from a simple worry: that human creative work was being scraped from the digital commons at industrial scale, and that authorship itself needed protecting in the age of AI. That argument was first set out in the white paper The Enclosure of the Human Mind.
Rose Marley of Co‑operatives UK and Oli Wilson of Beyond The Music took the idea to the Mayor of Greater Manchester, and it grew into a co‑operative framework in the tradition of the Rochdale Pioneers: not a rulebook, but a way for people who don’t agree to make hard decisions together.
On 9 October 2026, Beyond The Music brought music, screen, games, publishing, advertising, design, live, collecting societies, labels, publishers, government and the AI sector into one room at MediaCity Salford. Over a full day of sessions, people who usually argue past each other listened to each other instead.
The Principles were distilled from what was said on the day. They were presented at the close by Rose Marley, Chair of Beyond The Music, and Cliff Fluet, Summit Chair. They belong to the room that made them.
Principles for Co‑operation
How we work together. Some of these come from the co‑operative movement. Most came from the room.
Working together
We start from what we share, and talk in good faith.
Fair value
If your work makes the money, you get a fair share, big or small.
Respect for creators and their works
Ask first, give credit, treat people and what they’ve made properly.
Investing in the next generation
Skills and chances for those coming through, here.
Open to all
Everybody’s welcome. You don’t need to agree on every detail to have a seat.
Not a rulebook. A way of behaving with each other.
Principles to Frame the Debate
What we work on. A frame holds the picture. It doesn’t paint it.
Protect
Your work, your voice, your face. Your call.
Pay
If AI is built on creative work, it pays for it, bedroom producer or major.
Progress
AI that widens what creative people can do, and a next generation with careers here.
Sovereign Creativity
Our culture, grown on our own terms and shared on fair ones.
What the room said
Seven threads ran through every session of the day, from policy and performance to licensing and the long tail.
Licensing already works
Hundreds of AI licensing deals have already been struck. The task now is to scale licensing so it reaches small rights holders too.
Transparency is the lever
Record keeping and disclosure of training data are what bring bad actors to the table and make enforcement possible. You can’t stop what you can’t see.
Provenance needs plumbing
Interoperable, open standards, and provenance information that can’t be stripped out as work travels.
Likeness needs its own right
Today’s patchwork of laws doesn’t fit digital replicas of a person’s voice and face. The direction of travel is towards a clear right that covers everyone, not just the famous.
Enforcement has to be cheap and fast
Notice and takedown on every platform, remedies with teeth, and routes that work for people without lawyers.
Permission belongs to people
Consent should be granular and set by every contributor, including session musicians and producers, not only by labels and publishers.
Sovereignty is the frame
Applying UK law to UK creative work is a question about the country’s future, not a technical detail.
Latest
All newsThe 80% we already share
The day found more common ground than most people expected. Five things came back from every corner of the room.
- Human creativity comes first.
- Consent: ask before you use someone’s work, voice or likeness.
- Fair pay for the work that AI is built on.
- Transparency about what has been used to train and make things.
- Enforcement that works for the smallest player, not just the biggest.
The other 20% is where the interesting work is.
The questions still open
The Principles don’t pretend the hard parts are settled. These are the questions the next stage has to answer.
Where the value goes
Much of the value UK creative work generates is captured by AI systems owned and monetised elsewhere. How does more of it stay with the people and places that made it?
Who consents
Label and publisher deals are already happening at scale. How does consent also reach individual writers, performers, producers and session players?
How licensing is priced and run
Collective routes, so a developer needs one counterparty and a creator doesn’t have to bargain alone.
Who holds the record
Where the register of rights and permissions sits, and on whose authority.
What audit can actually see
What independent audit inspects once training data has already been through a model.
Standards that hold
Technical standards for provenance are being built, but they only stick with legal backing, the way secure web connections became the norm for online payments. And they have to survive the infrastructure that carries creative work, from operating systems to the networks that deliver files.
The next generation
Much of the archive may already have been scraped. The safeguards that matter most are the ones that protect the work being made from now on.
Integrity of the work
Who protects a work when AI changes it, beyond paying for it.
Pace
How fast government and industry should move, and in what order.
How the day was captured
Every session at the summit was recorded and transcribed. AI tools helped with the transcription, and every line was then checked by a person against the recordings to remove errors before anything was used. The Principles, the threads and the open questions on this page come from that reviewed record, replacing the placeholder text this site carried before the summit.
From the working draft to the frame
The Manchester Principles began life as a working draft, published in August 2026 as a starting point for the people who would shape the final version. Its four pillars carry straight through into the frame agreed on the day.
The working draft’s 29 clauses remain available as a detailed reference for anyone building the mechanisms behind the frame.
Read the August 2026 working draft| Working draft pillar (August 2026) | Where it lives now |
|---|---|
| LicensingPermission must be given, not assumed | Pay |
| ProvenanceOrigin recorded at creation, not reconstructed after | Protect |
| AttributionCredit is data, not courtesy | Progress |
| EnforcementA right without a remedy is decoration | Protect |
What happens next
The summit’s ask was simple: stay at the table. Three things are already moving.
Testing the mechanisms
The Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton, through its work on Creative Sovereignty, is exploring how the economic and governance side of the Principles could work in practice: collective licensing, value distribution, training‑data transparency and independent audit.
A working session in Manchester
An in‑person session in Manchester before Christmas will bring researchers, the creative industries and policy voices together to take the open questions forward.
A growing working group
Organisations and individuals across the creative industries, from national arts organisations to music educators, are registering to help build the answers.
Join the working group
Every place is checked by a person, so the conversation stays human and free of bots. The first cohort is capped at 1,000. Reading, citing and sharing the Principles needs no account.
Request a place in the working groupWho holds the Principles
The Principles belong to the people who shaped them. No commercial party with a material interest in implementing them will hold custody of them or control their text. Settling how they’re held, reviewed and amended is part of the work still to come.
What they are not
Not a technical standard
Several different standards should be capable of satisfying them.
Not an endorsement of any company or registry
A framework that only works if one provider owns the rails has failed before it starts.
Not legislation or a rulebook
A framework to gather around, which asks more than the law currently requires in places, deliberately.
Not an argument against generative technology
An argument that powerful technology should be built on consent and fair value.
The record
Before the summit
The white paper The Enclosure of the Human Mind sets out the case for protecting human authorship against the scraping of the digital commons.
August 2026
Working draft v1.0 published under CC BY 4.0 as a starting point for the Beyond The Music stakeholder group, and introduced to trade bodies, platforms, artists and the co‑operative sector as a shared decision, not a finished text.
9 October 2026
The Manchester Principles presented at the close of the Creative Industries AI Summit, MediaCity Salford. Captured and synthesised live on the day from what the room said.
October 2026
The University of Southampton’s Web Science Institute opens a collaboration on testing the mechanisms behind the Principles.
Now
The working group is forming around the open questions, with a working session planned in Manchester before Christmas.