Ten years after the global economic crisis and Slovenian organisations and businesses in the cultural and creative sectors (CCSs) are still feeling the effects. Everyone talks about resiliency, but how to go about achieving it seems to go left unsaid. If you work for an organisation in the cultural and creative sector, chances are your organisation operates with a two-sided business model. But is that the only way to do things? Are there other sources of revenue you haven’t uncovered? Or perhaps costs you could actually do without? Are you struggling to find viable and feasible ways for your organisation to deliver its meaningful programme and make the impact that you and your team envision? If so, then chances are, it’s time to take a good, hard look at your cultural (business) model using some tools that will help you reframe it.
Everyone talks about the need for resiliency, but how to achieve it?
Business consultant Julie Aldridge (UK) spoke on how organisations in the CCSs might innovate their business models as a way to better deliver their visions brilliantly.
Where do you start to rethink how your organisation might reshape itself and more importantly, when? According to Julie, many organisations unfortunately call her when they’ve already hit a crisis and expect her to find the magic wand. The time to start developing strategies, advises Julie, is before the crash. She calls it “Future Proofing” and she’s written a short e-guide as part of a programme from the Arts Marketing Association (AMA) to help you through the process.
If you were to call Julie Aldridge Consulting Ltd, she’d pull out a Business Model Canvas like the one developed by Alexander Osterwalder of Strategyzer.com and roll up her sleeves while she asked you a series of questions such as: What is your organisation’s vision? What interest do people have in your projects or programmes? What impact do they make? Then she’d take it to the next level with the question: How might your programme matter more to more people – audiences, funders, businesses? What would it take to deliver your vision brilliantly?
Says Julie, “It’s not about earning more money especially, it’s about generating value.” When we understand how our organisations matter to our communities and constituents, we can generate vision and purpose. To do so, she says, it’s important to look at the desirability, feasibility and viability of what you are doing or aim to do. It requires taking time – before a crisis – to explore the myriad of answers to the question What if…?
FURTHER READING:
– Communications expert and cultural model consultant José Rodríguez (SE) shared insights from Trans Europe Halles and Creative Lenses project, offering inspiring case studies.
– Edgar Garcia Casellas from the Catalan Institute for Cultural Companies (ICEC) told how the public Catalan model for CCSs has been reshaped to create a unique support and financing system that helps both non-profit organisations and for-profit companies in the creative sector to realise projects successfully.
See also: Beyond Cultural Model video lecture by Julie Aldridge & José Rodríguez (25´07 min).
Jana Renée Wilcoxen reports (see FULL REPORT) from the “Beyond the Cultural Model” conference (Oct. 16, 2018). Organised by Motovila Institute (CED Slovenia) within the Centre for Creativity platform, a programme run by the Museum of Architecture and Design, and in the frame of the Beyond Horizons study visit from Ukraine.
