In a workshop setting, we convened a range of technicians, researchers and scientists to establish what groundwork was required to create a strategy to make our marine and coastal imagery meet the FAIR principles. The workshops used the “Art of Hosting” approach, a participatory framework of dialogue-based practices and principles to foster meaningful conversations that harness the collective intelligence of all participants. We worked with graphic illustrators during and after the workshop to visualise the conversations. Then combined with the graphics we produced a blue paper to garner further investment and a commitment to proceed with the strategic roadmap. While the FAIR principles in themselves are relatively straightforward, the deliberations in the workshop revealed the complexities of applying these principles to marine and coastal imagery. This talk will present a brief overview of our blue paper – Towards a fairer future: making Coasts and Oceans Research imagery data FAIR, explain our strategic roadmap and highlight the challenges we are facing. We will also explain some of the key steps to ensuring that convening workshops goes beyond talking and extends into sense-making and information synthesis. Getting everyone onboard the boat for this FAIR journey could only have been achieved through genuine participation.