Cultural Venues Network

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Welcome to the Cultural Venues Network. We are a thriving online community for those who work in the arts & culture sector.

Our Purpose

When working in a cultural venue, it's important to have a support network of people who understand the challenges that come with working in the sector.

Whether you're an orchestra manager, curator, artist, administrator, theatre director, marketing assistant, facilities manager or IT technician, it can be tough to know where to go for help or advice.ย 

You need a community where you can share ideas, get advice, and find support.

The Cultural Venues Network is an online community of professionals with a range of backgrounds, roles & experience, from many different venues but who have all come together to help & support each other.

We offer our members networking opportunities, events, and helpful resources so that they can thriveย in their careers.


Membership to the Cultural Venues Network is free!ย 

Join us today and start networking with like-minded professionals.


What Do We Have To Offer?

  • ๐Ÿ‘จโ€๐Ÿ‘จโ€๐Ÿ‘ฆโ€๐Ÿ‘ฆ Networking opportunities
  • ๐Ÿ“” Member directory
  • ๐Ÿ’ฌ Real time chat with members
  • ๐Ÿ’Œ Interest based communities
  • โœ A place to share ideas
  • โ” A place to ask questions
  • ๐Ÿ‘Š A place to get support
  • ๐Ÿ“… Events (In person & Virtual)


The Cultural Venues Network uses a best in class digital community platform to provide fast, free and effective communication tools to facilitate networking and communication between members.


We Make It Easy To Connect With Others

Need IT advice but you don't have anyone in the business who can help? ๐Ÿ˜•

Looking for a facilities manager to discuss an LED lighting upgrade but you don't even know what LED stands for? ๐Ÿ˜•

Struggling to connect with your local community and wondering if there's anyone at a nearby venue who's overcome the same challenge? ๐Ÿ˜•ย 

You think "venue x,y,z" might do that, but you're not sure who to ask? ๐Ÿ˜•ย 

Before the Cultural Venues Network, there was no easy (centralised) way for staff members from different cultural venues to connect with each other effectively.

We've changed that, and now getting answers to these questions is easy.

Members

Members are the most important part of the Cultural Venues Network so we make it easy for you to connect with them.

You can browse for people, like and comment on their posts, follow them to be alerted when they post something new and even send direct messages, all from within one place.

Topics

Topic based discussions allow you to quickly connect with people with similar interests.

Suddenly you are in charge of IT for your venue because you know how to do a VLOOKUP in a spreadsheet, but you have no idea if a VLAN and a SQL server have anything in common?

Don't panic! Follow the topics that are relevant to your role and you'll quickly be able to reach out to other people who can help you.

Events

As well as allowing members to communicate with each other, we also have the ability to host events within the network.

Events can take place in person or virtually and they are a great way to connect with others and learn about things you may be interested in.

Groups

Groups are a great way to connect with other people about specific topics.

You can create very niche groups (IT administrators who share the same birthday, work in a Concert Hall and all wear glasses.. anyone?) or broader groups that are relevant to a wider range of people.

Within your group you will be able to post articles, ask questions, host meetings, present live to your members and even host events.

Perhaps you are interested in bringing together people from venues with live streaming experience, or those who are seeking to be net zero by 2030? There's a group for that.. and if not? Make one!


Already Manage A Group Or Community?

Providing your members work within a cultural venue, you can bring your community to the Cultural Venues Network free of charge. We can help you migrate your existing group and offer ongoing support running it too.


Why Should You Join Us?

Working in the cultural sector can be challenging, often organisations are charities / not for profits and their resources are limited.

English poet John Donne famously wrote: โ€œNo man is an island, entire of itselfโ€.

By leveraging the experience of others, working in different venues, doing similar roles, we can help each other collectively, and the sector as a whole.

Unlike some other communities, we're not restricted to geographical location, membership is open to anyone globally, giving us a diverse range of members.

We're also not associated with a specific software application or vendor, we're not trying to sell you anything and discussions can be completely open.

The Boring Bit..

Whilst we are a free and open community, there are some pre-requisites for those who would like to join.

Who Can Join Us?

Anyone working for a cultural venue, with a valid work email address can join the network.

When signing up to the network you will be asked to provide your work email address.ย 

We can onlyย accept members who sign up using an email address associated with their place of work, which we'll ask you to confirm as part of the sign up process.

We want to make sure that everyone who joins the community works for a cultural venue to ensure the community is a safe place for people to share ideas, without spam/bots or people trying to sell their products and services.

Therefore any requests made with personal email addresses will beย rejected.

What About Freelancers?

We know that freelancers play a massive role in the success of many cultural venues.

We are looking at ways to allow freelancers access to our platform, however due to current technical constraints, we can only accept members whom have an email address associated with a cultural venue.

Disclaimer

Whilst the network was founded by members of staff employed within a specific cultural venue, that venue is not directly affiliated with culturalvenues.org.