Artsadmin
Designing a Strategic Vision with an Independent Culture Hub
Artsadmin is an independent arts organisation that works with artists, communities and collaborators in the development of creative and progressive work and conversations.
Designed at Wove
The Question
Where is Artsadmin now and where is it going?
After 40 years, Artsadmin decided to undertake a strategic review. The Wove team went through several design sprints with the Artsadmin team to define and communicate what Artsadmin do, why they do it and how they create value for the people they work with.
I participated in the Value Proposition and Communicating the Change sprints of the review, helping out in workshops, pulling out findings, doing research and designing the manifesto.
The Approach
Value Proposition — Communicating the Change — The Manifesto
Mapping Interactions Workshop
Our Value Proposition
Testing Propositions Workshop
01 Value Proposition
Why? To define what Artsadmin do, why they do it and how they create value for the people they work with.
In this sprint we went through 4 phases; Gathering Perspectives, Mapping Interactions, Connecting Value, Testing Propositions. I worked with Scott to prepare and participate in the workshops. I helped distil the findings and communicated them to the client at the end of each day.
In the Gathering Perspectives phase, we reviewed strategic documents, sent one form to the Artsadmin team and another form to stakeholders outside of the organisation. Our findings included: “Artsadmin is an engine for culturally significant live art” and “It’s a highly complex organism with a lot of moving parts”.
In the Mapping Interactions phase, we mapped the journeys of (the many!) stakeholders. We found the “Core relationships are with artists” and “Expectation setting and delivering is a crucial area”.
In the Connecting Value phase, we reviewed the perspectives through 3 lenses, “Who we are”, “How we're viewed” and “How we operate"“. We introduced propositions and provocations to discuss their validity with the team. We heard “we're a central artery to creativity in East London” and “It’s useful to think about everything that Aa does is a project.”
Finally, in the Testing Propositions phase, Scott asked the Artsadmin team to review the architecture of Artsadmin as we understood it and to vote for the value propositions that had merit. He tested the shortlist with the Artsadmin team and external stakeholders, took on the feedback and settled on the final proposition.
Identity Workshop
Artist Journeys Workshop
Artist Journeys spread sketch
02 Communicating the Change
Why? To make the strategic vision tangible to their audiences, we co-designed a manifesto with the Artsadmin team.
After Brand Articulation and Setting Shared Directions sprints were complete, our team worked with Artsadmin to co-design a manifesto — to capture a moment in time and gather all the discussions from the strategic review in one place. This sprint involved 5 workshops.
An Editorial workshop to figure out what will go in it.
A Vision workshop to decide what we are focusing on.
An Audience workshop to agree on who our communities are.
An Identity workshop to collaborate on how we want to say it.
An Artist Journeys workshop to establish what the journeys are.
I helped prepare and participated in the Identity and Artist Journeys workshops.
The Identity workshop helped us collaborate on and co-design the manifesto, visually. We discussed visual material that the Artsadmin team brought to uncover the tone and style and that felt right to them.
The Artist Journeys workshop helped us establish the 5 programmes of support for artists — Portals, Place, Pilots, Platform and Projects. It was important to define these so we could set expectations for artists and communicate the ways Artsadmin can support them as a collaborative partner. After the workshop, I distilled our findings and visualised the layers of support in a diagram.
03 The Manifesto
The strategic review involved lots of problem framing, questions and collaboration which boiled down to a clear vision for Artsadmin. The Wove team put together a manifesto guided by the workshops with content from the Artsadmin team.
The manifesto was created as a tool to capture the vision, values, ways of working and statement of intent for Artsadmin stakeholders and communities. It acts as a dynamic, human and energetic expression of what Artsadmin is.
Details —
Designed with Wove
April – December 2021
Team: Scott Burnett, Cat Robertson, Johnny Kelly, Fiona Ennis, Éadaoin Hennessy
Links
Artsadmin — Website