A sustainable organization needs a solid business plan, whether it be a new endeavor or a refinement of an existing model. We help to define your core business activities, objectives, and goals for serving your community—or help you revisit and accelerate your existing plan. Together, we work to develop long-term financial plans, marketing strategy, optimized organizational structure, improvement plans, and a values-aligned brand.

Engaging with the full breadth of your community and catalyzing key stakeholders can feel daunting. To help manage this work, we develop comprehensive strategies to identify and connect with essential voices—local arts and culture organizations, individual creatives, board members, potential venue users, city staff, elected officials, business leaders, area residents, neighborhood champions, non-profit representatives, and more. Our work focuses on developing a general understanding of their overall support and potential concerns through targeted one-on-one interviews, focus groups, digital surveys, public forums, and town halls. We also utilize competitive event and programming inventory data—as well as industry relationships—to seek out potential partners that may not be known to the project team.

Articulating your vision and primary goals is the first step to a successful project. And through visioning workshops, goal-setting work, community engagement activities, project costing, market analysis, concept design, budget development, fundraising package creation, rendering generation, and project team development, we help you crystalize your ideas and turn them into an action plan. We work closely with you to understand the practical needs of your community, users, and stakeholders and develop a roadmap towards funding, planning, and design. We further collaborate with architects and engineers to analyze sites, identify form and function, and plan within the context of the surrounding environments, buildings, and social settings. Working directly for you, we act as your advocate, help clarify purpose, and build the team that will move your project into design and construction.

Determining need and feasibility for a new idea, required change, facility improvement, or operational adjustment is vital. It ensures your plan is supported by community, helps to identify if now is the right time for it to happen, and analyzes what other considerations are at play. We look at the options, analyze the data and your stakeholders, assess your facility, and make impartial recommendations on how to proceed—helping you to evaluate potential for major capital investments; equipment and system upgrades; and organizational, facility, or programmatic growth.

When a new venue or gathering space is being planned, the site selection is one of the first and most important decisions to make. After having worked on over 1,800 venues globally, we are uniquely capable of putting together a team to help you identify the right site for your vision. If you have multiple locations to choose from, we can help explore the merits and limitations of each, assessing which will best serve your community and your long-term goals. We also help plan how your proposed venue will work best within the context of the surrounding structures. Our comprehensive approach allows us to not only review the site, specific to the physical facility itself, but also to identify the operational and organizational risks and opportunities related to the selection process.

Addressing the opportunities and challenges presented in the unique ecosystem of touring environments, our venue booking and artistic programming team supports the planning and the implementation of programming—carefully curated to meet the specific needs and goals of your venue. This work includes venue booking services in addition to artistic programming development, utilization growth roadmaps, revenue modeling, market analysis, audience development strategy, community engagement goals, and new booker/programmer training and coaching.

As organizations grow and change, operational structure must also adapt and expand accordingly. Increased programming and utilization may require more staffing, so we help you identify the specific needs of your organization and make recommendations to support your next steps. Through an in-person and hands-on analysis of your organization and operations, we help to formulate strategic and sustainable improvements that develop your team and their skills. This can include experience enhancement, departmental restructuring, efficiency review, compensation analysis, structure improvements, creation of job descriptions, assistance with hiring, and more. We also offer operational coaching sessions to support facility managers, operators, and programmers in achieving their goals and professional growth. And we further support guest experience, developing an holistic program that begins with staff and stakeholder engagement and then provides on-site experience mapping to establish guest experience standards.