Creative Planning offers the following services:
Cultural planning asks the question: why and how do arts, culture and creativity matter to a community’s identity, economy and quality of life. The cultural planning process identifies issues, strengths and challenges for cultural development, engages civic and cultural leaders in dialogue about the role, value and outcomes of cultural development and builds consensus on strategies to optimize cultural development as a resource to enhance community vitality, livability and prosperity.
Principal, Bill Bulick has led or co-led cultural planning and creative economy/community studies in over 20 communities and states, including Austin, Tucson, Minneapolis, Kelowna, BC, Charlotte, Portland, Spokane, Monterey County, Santa Cruz, Newark, NJ, Lake Tahoe, San Mateo County, California, Cincinnati and Washington State.
Organizational sustainability can be reinvigorated through carefully structured – and creative! – cycles of inquiry, reflection, dialogue, learning and decision making. Creative planning builds resilience by facilitating agreements on vision, mission and values that provide a “rudder” to navigate unpredictable seas and weather changes. Yearly and multi-year strategies and objectives can be attached to these basic agreements.
We have particular experience and interest in helping organizations progress through critical life-cycle stages towards sustainable models. Organizations do not exist in a vacuum but as a result of their historic evolution, key competencies and dynamic relationship with external stakeholders and the broader community. It is through the interplay of all these factors that essential questions can be addressed which lead from situation to intent – vision to action.
Principal, Bill Bulick, led numerous cycles of program design, implementation and evaluation during fifteen years of leadership of public, non-profit and national organizations. He has evaluated hundreds of programs applying for funding to local, state and federal funding agencies as lead staff and as a member and chair of grants panels at the local, state and federal level over the last 25 years and consults with funders on programs and funding criteria. Program design and evaluation are frequent components or outcomes of strategic planning.
Bill has particular experience with YouthArts and Arts Education programs and has led program design, development, assessment and training for agencies around the country, including the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Dept. of Education, National Endowment for the Arts, national foundations, local juvenile justice and social service organizations; state and local arts councils.
There’s one thing that we’ve always been able to count on – Change. And, new technology has dramatically increased the rate of change. Momentum swings, demographic shifts, and perception shifts accelerated by instantaneous media access all change the familiar to the unknown. Some of these changes happen gradually yet can sneak up on the best laid plans. Some happen so rapidly, they leave our heads spinning.
Each organization develops its own mechanisms for dealing with a world in constant flux. A coping mentality can make it hard to gain the perspective it takes for clear headed, visionary thinking. But change is relentless. And, many of the traditional ways of measuring and understanding the external world are not quick enough or accurate enough to be counted on anymore.
Conversations with key customers and stakeholders are essential to give you a real time feel of the live issues that are affecting your market, organization or community. How does your culture, your organization, your cause, your brand fit within the big picture? Where is it taking you? Where could it go? What is working? How could it be better? How will you know?
Creative planning can help you illuminate critical issues and tipping point strategies through qualitative research that uncover the issues that no one thought to ask about - studies that reveal opportunities or obstacles that lie hidden beneath the surface, studies that clarify the nuance of language and images that can strengthen the bond between you and your customers or constituents. Creative Planning can also help you build the leadership organizational capacity, and vision to help manage the kind of change that is needed to take advantage of the opportunities revealed.
Psychographics, demographics, industry trends, marketing life cycle, forecasts and the competition can all be analyzed. But the statistics can only show you part of the picture. Conversations with key customers and stakeholders are essential to give you a real time feel of the live issues that are affecting your market and organization. How does your brand or product fit into the big picture? Where is it taking you? Where could it go? What is working? How could it be better? How will you know?
Any communication between a company or organization and its customers or constituents needs to connect with those human beings as individuals, not statistics to be effective.
What symbols, words, and ideas will be effective in building brands? How will you know before you spend a lot of money developing the materials?
Our planning process engages customers encouraging and stimulating the evolution of ideas that will motivate and change behavior.
You may need to find help in finding the spot where your opportunities merge with the forces affecting your market or your existing plans. You may need a rallying cry to motivate your troops to get your organization aligned with new forces of change, or a plan to focus your energy on that clear vision, to see the obstacles in your way and prepare to leap over them.