In May 2009, the hub was appointed by the newly formed Sound and Music organisation to work with its nascent ‘programme’ team, to develop a programme strategy for 2009-10. At this point, SaM was still a fledgling organisation, formed out of the merger of a number of contemporary music and sound art organisations. Over the next two months, which saw a lot of change in the organisation, we worked with members of the programme team to develop a new programme plan that they could all feel ownership of.
To kick off, we worked with the team to do some internal scoping and auditing, identifying their thoughts about where they were starting from, where areas of common ground were and what the overall direction of travel might look like. Stage 2 saw us doing some situational analysis: reviewing current programme areas, delivery mechanisms, skills gaps, a SWOT analysis, plus an in-depth assessment of the audiences the founding organisations had brought with them. We also did some territory mapping, identifying potential stakeholders, competitors etc. Stage 3 saw us start to look forward, reviewing the organisation’s mission and vision, where a new programme would ‘sit’ in the new organisation, and how the programme team should work with colleagues across the organisation. We also started to flesh out a potential programme strategy, covering own promotions, co-promotions/co-productions, commissioning etc, and potential partnership models, plus links to other areas of SAM activity. At this point, we turned our collective thinking over to the wider SAM team, and workshopped our work to date to ensure that our strategy was fit for purpose in a wider organisational context. Now on the home stretch, we worked with the team, to pull together a final strategy, that included a review of the internal and external contexts; an outline of the events team’s vision and values; aims and objectives for the next 3 year period, and a commentary on how these aligned with Arts Council priorities; an analysis of partnership models; risk analysis, and programme plan.
And all that in just 2 months. Phew!
Over the course of its work with the hub the team refined its thinking about its vision, values, aim and objectives, as well as reviewing current partnerships and working practices and identifying new partnership models.
This strategy document summarises the work done by the team, and is intended to act as an events team ‘manual’, providing clarity for all in the Sound and Music team about the events team’s focus, function and priorities.