Toolkit

Art and Cultural Commissioning Toolkit aims to encourage arts and cultural partners to engage with the commissioning process and to develop new partnerships and business models. It offers guidance, case-studies and a glossary to give insight into commissioning.

New Playgrounds is focusing on hacks, hackdays and hackathons as events that seek to develop new relationships and collaborations, whilst creating solutions and unravelling challenges. The aim of the toolkit is to make hack events more accessible, and to enable more people to benefit from what they have to offer. It examines some of the main types of hacks, what the benefits are for individuals and organisations taking part, the different approaches to engaging various communities and how to create the right environment.

Toolkit for Non-violent Direct Action (NVDA) is a guide to non-violent direct action for the Amnesty International activism community of practice. NVDA covers a spectrum of activities, from letter writing and collecting petition signatures, to rallies, demonstrations and media stunts, and extending to higher risk activities such as banner drops, sit-ins and similar tactics.

New Playgrounds is focusing on hacks, hackdays and hackathons as events that seek to develop new relationships and collaborations, whilst creating solutions and unravelling challenges. The aim of the toolkit is to make hack events more accessible, and to enable more people to benefit from what they have to offer. It examines some of the main types of hacks, what the benefits are for individuals and organisations taking part, the different approaches to engaging various communities and how to create the right environment.

How to Place Audiences at the Centre of Cultural Organisations toolkit-Part I investigates how organisations shift towards ‘audience centricity’. It does not intend to define ‘good’ audience development, but considers how to find an appropriate balance between audience and artistic objectives means necessarily - some kind of change. It starts with a self-assessment exercise, inviting each organisation to be fully aware of what role audiences have in their mission before they use guide part II.

Kids in Museums is an independent charity dedicated to making museums open and welcoming to all families. They are keen on encouraging museums and galleries to organise activities specifically focus on children’s experiences during museum visits. Its mission is built around the Kids in the Museum Manifesto which is a set of simple guidelines for museums. It delineates what children, young people and families feel, makes a museum a great place to visit.

An introductory guide to Audience Development planning pays special attention to present guidance in a linear way, so that each institution can develop its own engaging and flexile planning process to include the whole organisation.

Imagining Arts Organisations For the New Audiences: Values and Valuing toolkit was commissioned by the Cleveland Foundation in the United States and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation in the UK. This book aims to help arts organisations to reach younger and more diverse audiences. It follows an audience development organization model, which focuses on different parts of an organization and how they fit together. In each chapter, it explores the principles that underline action, and which parts of the organisations are involved.

How to Build a Bridges is a toolkit to support the mobility of cultural professionals, guiding them to build international collaborative projects and learning experiences within the framework of Bridge Between European Cultural Centres mobility programme of European Network of Cultural Centres. It encourages cultural centre professionals to have international experience, such as job shadowing, facilitation of collaborative project and presents tools to self-reflect on their mobility experience.

Quishare Fest Toolkit works as a project that aims to open source the organisation of a festival or conference, using the example of OuiShare's flagship event OuiShare Fest. It aims to empower communities and individuals around the world to organise their own festivals or participatory conferences by sharing the knowledge and resources of their communities. It touches all areas of event organisation, including budget & finance, programs, event production, communication, team organisation and documentation.

Digital Engagement in Culture, Heritage and the Arts toolkit presents a framework helps designing strategies, processes and technologies to systematically engage all stakeholders with the institution in order to maximise its value. It starts with building a digital engagement strategy at an organizational level, which requires designing a digital vision, mission statement and followed by evaluation of audiences and assets. It presents tools for various digital engagement strategies and how to organize them, including sample digital engagement frameworks for different types of organisations such as heritage site, exhibition, festival, local library etc.

Creative Enterprise Toolkit is created by Nesta as a practical resource to help anyone who is planning to launch a new creative business. It gives information and advice together with a series of activities and exercises that help to explore a creative idea and develop it into a business plan. It also supports this setting up process via examples from diverse case studies.

The Toolkit for Itinerant Artists is for those on the move, those who are still and those who can’t travel really. The hardships of being displaced, constantly being in flux are both an existential ordeal and an opportunity to exercise creativity. It displays contributions from ten artists who are invited by Elena Marchevska, including advice, exercises and tools for survival when an artist is on the move or stuck in a place of discomfort and unfamiliarity.

This online toolkit supports arts, culture and heritage organisations to integrate digital technology into their work. It has two elements: a Charter that outlines digital best practices and a Tracker that allows organisations to assess their approach to digital technology and develop plans for future work. The Compass has been developed following research and a consultation process that included workshops in all four UK nations, attended by people from more than 80 different arts, cultural and heritage organisations with various levels of digital confidence, expertise and experience.

Socio-Economic Diversity and Inclusion in the Arts: A Toolkit for Employers. London: Jerwood Arts. This toolkit focuses on the socio- economic background and recognises it as a ‘protected characteristic’ alongside other identity markers such as gender, sexuality, disability and ethnicity under the Equality Act 2010. It argues that without this protected status, social-economic background will remain an under-researched, under-funded, ‘hidden barrier’ in the arts. It aims at all arts and cultural organisations and individuals interested in taking action to advance socio-economic diversity and social equality, and achieve excellence. It presents practical guidance, including top tips, case studies and extensive practical appendixes of what to measure, where to advertise and further reading.

Integrity in Practice Toolkit aims to improve research integrity and support a positive research culture within organisations. It has been developed by the Royal Society and UK Research Integrity Office. It features a variety of new ideas from across the UK and the rest of the world, which require minimal to major resource support and can be led by individuals as well as institutions, to inspire creative thinking in this area.

Family Arts Evaluation and Audience Research Toolkit aims to share guidance, information and ideas on evaluating family festival events and researching the audiences. It includes tips for basic evaluation and audience research for smaller organisations with limited resources, followed by information for organisations that want to produce a more in-depth evaluation.

Researching Audiences at Outdoor Events and Festivals is toolkit which aims to provide a framework to measuring and evidencing the impact of an outdoor event. The guidelines provide practical advice for audience research at un-ticketed cultural festivals and other events in the following sections: research principles, data collection methods, evidencing success, estimating audience size, questionnaires and surveys, working with volunteers and assessing economic impact.

Theory of Change Worksheet was developed by Nesta as a toolkit to help to map out the necessary steps for any individual/organisation need to take to achieve a particular goal. It serves to identify the potential impact and risks of your plan, and connect your work to a bigger goal. It is a fill in chart that you can download and use numerous times.

Indicator Framework on Culture and Democracy is an innovative tool to assess and optimise cultural policies using reliable data and an online application. It demonstrates the links between culture and democracy, using conventional and cutting-edge statistical methods. It helps mapping European trends in access to and participation in culture and generates comparable national and European survey data. It will enhance existing information systems on culture and will benefit related statistical projects.

Public Art : A Guide to Evaluation has been developed to assist those who need to measure outcomes and impacts of artistic practice in the public realm. It aims to be realistic about some of the difficulties inherent in defining quality and success in art. The guide focuses on four main subjects: why evaluation is valuable; Matrix of capturing values and outcomes; evaluation from a personal point of view and finally establishing indicators. It was first published in 2009. Since then, it has been updated annually in response to changes in UK Government policy.

Funding Innovation: A Practice Guide is primarily aimed at funders – governments, agencies, investment organisations and foundations – that provide funding for projects or organisations to support innovation. It provides information on different funding tools such as stage-gate grants; match funding dependent grants; revenue dependent grants, convertible grants and combination grants, alongside challenge prizes and impact investment schemes.

Policy on Belonging Kit identifies the chief cultural deficit in the USA is sense of belonging, and aims to invest in belonging and cultural citizenship via this toolkit. The toolkit was developed by the people-powered US Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) after the 2016 election. USDAC launched Standing for Culture Democracy platform which addresses many issues that stand in the way of cultural democracy, offering powerful policies and interventions to create culture shift.

Development Impact & You toolkit outlines how to invent, adopt and adapt ideas that can deliver better result. It is designed for practitioners, working in development sector. It displays the tools with their key reference, which helps reader to trace back their origins and dive deeper into other publications about their application.

Guided by Young Voices guide focuses on youth governance. It draws attention to the impact that organisations can achieve from bringing young trustees around the table. It also includes practical tips on how to include young people in decision- making processes such as to the board, how to build a talent pool, how to support young trustees and how to overcome potential challenges along the way.

A Practical Guide to Governance offers a range of essential information, bespoke resources and downloadable templates that address some of the most frequently asked questions in relation to the effective governance of cultural organisations. This practical online guide is made of four sections: structure; roles and responsibilities, finance, risk management and fundraising; board meetings and recruitment, each of which covers a pertinent point of governance.

Patreon is a creator-founded company organisation model, helping creators build membership businesses that empower them to create on their own terms. It is an innovative membership-based business model that enables artists and creators get a sustainable income. It supports its users via a resource community.

Social Media Toolkit for Cultural Managers aims to explore how arts and culture organisations throughout EU can expand their online brand so as to push both the reach and significance of their current efforts. It explores a wide range of social media platforms from a know-how and when-to use-which perspectives, it also introduces key social media jargon.

Afrifestnet Festivals Best Practice Toolkit - Setting Up addresses to festivals via the ‘who, what, why, where, when and how’ sections, alongside giving detailed explanations of the business aspects of Festivals through the use of business plan. In appendices, it presents a sample promotion plan, legal information needed to organise a festival in African countries and a sample finance policy document. It primarily focuses on 160 members and their practice in Africa.

Marketing Campaign Planning Guide helps to build campaign plans which sit within overall marketing strategies of arts organisations to promote specific products, performances, exhibitions or services. The guide walks throughout the campaigning process together with the managers to organise their thoughts, identify appropriate target markets and craft effective messages to reach.

The Sotheby's Mei Moses Indices are developed to serve as a preeminent measure of the state of the art market. They are developed to control differing levels of quality, size, colour, maker, and aesthetics of a work of art by analysing repeat sales. This site presents case-studies and artist data illustrating how it is used, as well as related research articles alongside index chart.

Arts-Based Methods for Transformative Engagement is a toolkit that intends to support new ways of thinking and doing in our work as change agents towards regenerative societies. It offers practical examples, inspirations, and tips for using creative facilitation practices, as well as resources and relevant academic references. This guide aims at facilitators of all experience levels, across various fields - in education, community engagement, or business and professional settings, etc.

Creative and Culture Skills website provides information for young people to work and learn in the creative industries. It provides various information such as an example of live music production budget and live music settlement. It is also possible to download live music production budget.

In Crowdfunding blog, Nesta explores the potential of crowdfunding to help bring innovative ideas to life and giving advice on how to go about setting up a crowdfunding campaign. as a new method of finance.

Exhibition Payment Guide provides sectorial advice for establishing and agreeing exhibition payments for the benefit of the whole sector; for organisations to establish best practice, for artists to sustain their careers and so that audiences can see art that reflects the full spectrum of human experience. It also gives guidance to visual artists to calculate their day rate and a quote before preparing a budget.

The Evaluation Journey- A Toolkit for Cultural Operators is initiated by the European Network of Cultural Centres (ENCC). It aims to initiate cultural operators in the different steps of development of your evaluation through information, advice and exercises. It is meant for art organisations with limited budgets and limited human resources for evaluation.

Look, I am Priceless handbook aims to guide arts organisations through the steps of evaluation. It provides pre-conceived tools to the arts organisations in case they have chosen to make its own evaluation ( in- house) or upon a request of funder/ decision-maker ( external). In the first case, this toolkit helps to design, carry out and use the evaluation; in the second, it helps to identify the risks and traps along the way, and to control the process.

Work Placement in the Arts and Cultural Sector: Diversity, Equality and Access research offers a number of recommendations to help Higher Education Institutions staff address equality issues in higher education work placements within the arts and cultural sector. It aims to research and identify challenges in accessing and completing a work placement, particularly students who are disabled or coming from BME or socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Organizing the work of art museum report presents a study of the organizational charts of roughly one third of Association of Art Museum Directors member museums and interviews with roughly 20 of our member directors, focusing on strategic direction and organizational structure. It argues to deepen audience engagement and reach new audiences, the museums should align their organisational structure according to their services including adjustments in relevant departments.

How to Place Audiences at the Centre of Cultural Organisations toolkit- Part II intends to provide a series of implementable policy recommendations targeting decision-makers at the local, regional, national and EU levels. Also included are recommendations targeting cultural organizations, citizens’ initiatives and artists themselves which are followed by concrete examples of specific schemes and programmes that created the right conditions or fostered innovation.

Internships in The Arts -A Guide for Arts Organisations aims to open up entry routes for young people into creative and cultural industries. It also shows the current state of the arts and culture sector, how reliant it is on unpaid labour, how important first-hand work experience is, and what the demand is from young people for jobs, and suggests arts organisations to follow these guidelines to create fairly working conditions for young people.

Creating a Digital Policy and Plan is the training for National Portfolio Organisations by The Space. It follows a step by step approach, covering audiences, distribution and platforms and content creation, and finally organisational issues as section titles. The power point presentation slides provide a record of the training session and the case studies are available on the site.

The Arts Development Company is a web site that provides a variety of resources to help artists make a living out of their work/ arts organisations deliver projects and support artists. Ranging from influencer marketing to how to style and photograph your work, from web site quick fixes to hashtags for artists and makers.

AMA Culturehive is a free online resource library for culture professionals, that brings the collective intelligence of the sector together in one place. It’s run by the Arts Marketing Association, a team of people passionate about engaging the public in arts, heritage and culture. Besides being a membership organization which is dedicated to drive better connections between arts and culture and the public via trainings, networking events, it also presents an archive of everything AMA has produced, including older material from Demos, Mission Models & Money.

Sustainable Production Guide is for artistic directors, producers, directors, production managers, lighting designers and technicians, set designers and builders, costume designers, and performing arts practitioners across the industry seeking to understand and reduce their environmental impacts. This guide is both a resource documenting best practice and an invitation to be part of this growing community, committed to developing future-proof production practices.

Environmental Policy Action Plan Guidelines offers a policy tool for arts organisations to become more sustainable. These guidelines have been developed for organisations of all shapes and size, regardless of where they are on their environmental journey. It helps to build the most meaningful and successful environmental policy and action plans are those which are specific to the nature of your organisation's activities and impacts, genuinely supported by top management and based on engagement with staff.

This toolkit presents tools, tactics and methods to harness the power of people, data and technology to solve global challenges. It is tailored to support the design of a collective intelligence project. It is meant to be used by teams or groups working through the activities and exercises together. Its modular design enables users to develop infinite possibilities. The current version of the playbook is at its BETA stage, aiming at relative newcomers to collective intelligence, which will be advanced at the future versions.

Creative Toolkit is an online resource with advice for careers in the performing arts, media and entertainment sectors. It also gives updated information about issues around the workplace such as the national minimum/living wage, working time and guidance on health and safety and insurance etc. alongside with news from the industry. It was developed by BECTU, the UK's media and entertainment union.