Welcome to the
Cultural Business Toolkit

The Cultural Business Toolkit is a learning resource that builds on the Cultural Business Development Programme (CBDP) provided FREE to cultural businesses in Scotland. Commissioned by Creative Scotland and the Scottish Government, it addresses a skills gap experienced by creative leaders. The programme supports leaders to go beyond delivering projects, to building sustainable businesses through strategic innovation.

Delivered as a live, expert-led programme for creative leaders across Scotland, CBDP was built on the understanding that generic business development training does not work for this sector. Cultural organisations have to lead taste rather than follow it, and keep creative ambition at the centre of the business while building the resilience to survive without relying on project-to-project funding.

This toolkit is the self-directed version of that programme giving you the same frameworks and tools but without the live facilitation. You can work through them at your own pace. It is free to access for Scotland's creative and cultural businesses.

ACCESS THE TOOLKIT
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Build Confidence

Cultural organisations are rarely short of ideas. What is harder to build is the confidence to back one commercially and build it into a business.

The toolkit helps you to articulate:

  • what your organisation does

  • why it matters

  • and, crucially, why someone should pay for it, invest in it or fund it

Step-by-step our exercises break that process into a sequence of short, manageable canvases, so you are never facing a blank page or a business plan template built for a different kind of organisation.

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Learn New Approaches

Each canvas is built around frameworks developed with sector specialists working across:

  • audience development

  • data and digital intelligence

  • funding,

  • risk and impact measurement

then adapted specifically for cultural organisations.

You will not be asked to force your organisation into a generic business template. You will be asked to look at your market, your value and your risk with tools built for how the cultural sector actually operates.

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Gain Practical Tools

Every canvas produces something you can use straight away, from a mapped market position to a tested value proposition, a business model you can act on or a small-scale experiment you can run before committing real resource.

You will learn how to:

  • interrogate a Market Gap to understand your competitive position

  • develop a Value Proposition to test your offer

  • how to deploy a Prototype

alongside 10 other tools for developing and running an effective business.

What’s Included

The toolkit contains thirteen canvases, organised into six phases that enable a staged and risk managed business development process. Beginning with considering your existing business model, you are then led through tools to understand your own work and map your marketplace. Customers are considered through both economy and empathy before defining your offer, with all your knowledge finally deployed to develop and effectively test prototypes that drive your revenue and market opportunities.

  • A complete sequence from Finding Your Bearings through to Your Prototype, each canvas building on the one before it across 6 phases of learning:

    • Finding Your Bearings

    • Your Work

    • Your Marketplace

    • Your Customers

    • Your Offer

    • Your Prototype

  • No fixed sessions or cohort dates. Work through the toolkit in order, or return to a single canvas whenever a decision in front of you calls for it.

  • Every framework in the toolkit has already been tested with cultural leaders across Scotland through the full CBDP programme.

A comprehensive infographic outlining a cultural business development program with sections on stakeholder analysis, empathy mapping, and project insight. The diagram includes various worksheets, workflow instructions, and action steps designed for professional development.

Explore What's Inside

  • Begin by getting on overview of where you are as a business using the Business Model Canvas, adapted for how cultural organisations generate income, from licensing and commissions through to tickets, publications and venue hire.

  • Start with what you actually do. The Insight, Invention and Innovation canvas, the Ansoff Matrix and the BCG Matrix help you see your existing activity clearly before you decide what to grow, change or stop.

  • Map where you sit against everyone else operating in your space. The Competitive Landscape and Market Gap Analysis canvases identify direct and indirect competitors and the gaps your organisation is placed to fill.

  • Separate the people who experience your work from the people who commission it and the people who fund it, since cultural organisations usually have to satisfy all three. The Commercial Stakeholder Analysis and Empathy Mapping canvases build that picture from real testimony, not assumption.

  • Shape what you are actually offering and decide what matters most about it. The Value Proposition canvas, MoSCoW Prioritisation and the customer funnel and pipeline canvas take you from an idea to a prioritised, sequenced offer.

  • Before you commit real budget or time, test the riskiest assumption at a small scale. The External Forces and Risk Register canvas and the Prototype Experiment Canvas help you design that test and read the results honestly.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • It is a set of thirteen practical canvases, drawn from the Cultural Business Development Programme, that walk you through building or strengthening a sustainable business model for your creative or cultural organisation.

  • Yes. The toolkit was developed under the CBDP commission from Creative Scotland and the Scottish Government, specifically so that Scotland's creative and cultural businesses could access these tools without cost, whether or not they took part in the live programme. You can buy facilitated sessions with the Curated Place team from within the canvases if you want additional support.

  • Creative and cultural organisations and practitioners based in Scotland, from independent freelancers to established institutions, who want to move from project-to-project delivery towards a more sustainable business model.

  • No. The toolkit is designed for self-directed use. It draws on the same frameworks as the live, expert-led programme, but you do not need to have attended a session to work through it. You can contact the Curated Place facilitation team to support your work if you’d like by upgrading to a facilitated session from within the canvases.

ACCESS THE TOOLKIT

  • That depends on your organisation and how much time you give it. Some people work through all six zones in sequence over several weeks; others come back to a single canvas when a specific decision is in front of them. Both are a reasonable way to use it. The canvases are presented as a linear sequence but, in reality, you will find yourself creating small feedback loops as you develop your thinking. Consider them all working documents.

  • The canvases are accessed via the creativeproducertraining.com/cultural-business-toolkit member area. When you sign up, you will create an account. The canvases are then provided as a Miro board. To use this, you will need to create a user profile at www.miro.com - a free one is fine. You can then duplicate the canvases into your own user area and work privately with your teams. On the canvases, at the bottom left, you will find a button where you can book a facilitated session with Curated Place if you need help.

  • No. The full CBDP is a live, facilitated programme with guest sector experts, run in cohorts across Scotland. This toolkit is the self-directed version utilising the frameworks and worksheets, without the facilitation or the expert sessions.

  • You can contact the team using the support request button below or by booking a facilitated session, either from the canvases or directly on Miro.