AUDIENCE STRATEGY SPRINT
Bring your audience conversations into clearer focus.
A structured audience strategy sprint for cultural organisations that need greater clarity, alignment and direction around their audience strategy.
Designed for leadership teams navigating change, planning cycles, funding bids, internal disagreement or strategic uncertainty.
Focused, practical and light-touch.
“Audience strategy can often seem like a big beast to tackle, but Sarah’s Audience Sprint framework broke it down into focused and manageable next steps. It gave us clarity around key priorities and highlighted where we needed to challenge our thinking.”
Director of Audience and Business Growth - Institute of Contemporary Art, London
“A calm, focused, fun and highly professional energy, helping us navigate complex discussions with clarity and purpose.”
CEO - The Lighthouse Arts Centre, Poole
Audiences sit at the intersection of mission, participation, programming, income, reputation and growth.
Different teams often hold different assumptions. Conversations go round in circles. Priorities become difficult to agree. Time and resources get spread too thinly.
Sometimes the challenge is not a lack of audience data. It is a lack of shared understanding about what it means and what should happen next.
Audience strategy affects all parts of your organisation.
WHY THIS MATTERS
What is the quality of your internal conversations about your audiences?
WHO IT IS FOR
New leadership?
Are you a new Director, Leadership team or Board who need to understand where the organisation currently stands on audiences before setting direction?
Internal disagreement?
Do you feel that sometimes programming, marketing, participation, commercial or board teams may be working from different assumptions about audiences and priorities.?
Mid-planning or funding cycle?
Are you in need of more energy and clarity around your audience development strategy so it becomes more central to your business planning or can effectively support your funding bids?
Experiencing organisational change?
Is a shift in your programme, building or operating model driving a rethink and refresh of your approach to audiences? And are you asking the right questions to hep you make that shift?
The Audience Strategy Sprint is a focused, light-touch intervention designed to surface tensions, identify alignment and create the right conditions for strategic conversations about the future of your audience.
The process is not full service consultancy, or deep dive data analysis. It takes weeks not months and is accessible for organisations of all sizes and budgets.
It’s been built using our experience of the current climate, sector challenges and audience growth opportunities.
It has one goal, to kick start clear and energised audience strategy development.
This process will move you from circular conversations to practical decision-making.
A SPECIFIC PROCESS
Want to talk through whether this would help your organisation?
We can help you decide whether the Sprint is the right fit for the conversations you need to have.
HOW IT WORKS
A clear three-step process.
STEP 1
Opening up the conversation
A one-hour briefing call establishes your context and desired outcomes.
A carefully designed State of Play survey, sent to your leadership, staff or board, then helps us understand how audiences are currently viewed across the organisation.
We use it to spot alignment, name uncertainty and surface real opportunities.
STEP 2
Clarity on direction of travel
A concise, jargon-free Position & Priorities Paper pulls out your specific areas of agreement and divergence and headlines the absolutely critical audience priorities your organisation needs to discuss.
We then do that in a facilitated half-day workshop where we explore assumptions, discuss unresolved tensions and get to grips with real future direction. It’s a chance to hold nuanced and meaningful conversation about your priorities - with the audience context and experienced facilitation to make them count.
STEP 3
Establishing a clearer future
After the workshop, your organisation receives really clear recommendations. Combining your workshop outcomes and our expert audience strategy tools, the short paper will include agreed priorities, strategic principles, immediate actions and suggested areas for future work, research or development.
Clarity, priorities and practical next steps.
WHAT YOU LEAVE WITH
Greater clarity around audience priorities, including areas of alignment and disagreement.
A stronger foundation for future planning, funding bids or strategy development.
Constructive leadership discussion in a calm, well-supported environment.
Immediate actions and recommendations for further work.
A trusted advisor for complex audience conversations.
ABOUT SARAH
Sarah Chambers is an audience strategy specialist with more than 23 years’ experience working with national cultural organisations.
Her work focuses on helping organisations navigate complex audience conversations with clarity, care and practical focus.
Sarah has facilitated strategic discussions across board away days, leadership planning sessions, staff engagement, volunteer roadshows and audience-centred strategy work.
Clients often describe Sarah as a calm facilitator, critical friend and trusted advisor who can hold difficult discussions with sensitivity and purpose.
PRACTICAL DETAILS
Designed to be focused and manageable.
The Sprint includes:
State of Play Leadership survey
Position & Priorities Paper
Facilitated Leadership workshop
Recommended next steps paper
Timing and cost
The sprint can usually run across 4 to 5 weeks, depending on diaries and scheduling.
£2,400
Note: There is only 1 sprint slot per month, with advance bookings being taken only where there is availability.
START THE CONVERSATION
Interested in exploring whether the sprint is right for your organisation?
Email Sarah to arrange an initial conversation about your context, priorities and whether this light-touch process is the right fit.