STRATEGY FOR CULTURAL ORGANISATIONS
WORKING WITH CREATIVE TECHNOLOGY
I’m Ian Ravenscroft, founder of Green Raven: an independent strategic consultancy for arts, culture, heritage, and creative technology organisations across the UK.
I help you understand what your audiences actually need and find the smartest way to deliver it, whether that means new technology, refreshed thinking, team processes, or the confidence to do less and do it better.
Whatever technologies, challenges, art forms, audiences, and ambitions you bring, Green Raven builds on your specific context and identity. How can we work together? A conversation is the best place to start.
What Green Raven Does
Cultural organisations face difficult decisions about how to reach audiences, how to develop experiences, and where creative technology fits within it all. The landscape is noisy, full of competing platforms, emerging tools, and pressure to innovate without clear direction. The real questions are usually cultural and organisational before they’re technical.
To overcome this I provide independent strategic support at every stage. Whether you’re scoping a new project, reviewing technology strategy, or navigating partnerships, I give you honest assessment, practical options, and a clear path forward.
My approach is rooted in strategic realism: investigative, grounded in how organisations and audiences actually behave, and built from your specific context rather than a framework pulled off the shelf.
I work across audience engagement, cultural experience, creative technology, immersive, and organisational change, bringing cross-sector pattern recognition from journalism, broadcast, digital, and the cultural sector to challenges that rarely sit neatly in one discipline.
Working
With
Innovators
Green Raven works with cultural organisations and creative studios to surface opportunities, provide strategic guidance, and deliver change across digital, XR, immersive & innovation
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How Green Raven Works
To help guide you, Green Raven offers four core services, each designed for a different stage of your project or organisation's needs. Not sure which is right for you? Get in touch and we will work it out together. ian@greenraven.co.uk
Soundboard
"We know what we're trying to achieve, but we don't know where to start."
Soundboard is structured mentoring and support for leaders and teams navigating creative, digital, or strategic challenges. The format is four sessions over four weeks. This is enough time to untangle a problem, explore an opportunity, gain external perspective on a challenge, and make a plan.
Ideal for: heads of digital and marketing, experience and programme leads, creative directors, and founders working through a specific challenge.
Kickstart
"We've got an idea, now we need to make it a reality."
Kickstart is early-stage creative and project development support typically delivered over three days. Kickstart helps you take an idea or brief and turn it into something ready to move forward: a clear scope, a realistic plan, and the right questions answered before investment begins.
Ideal for: organisations with funding or programmes in the planning stage that need a strategic route from idea to delivery.
Reality Check
"To make confident decisions we need to better understand our organisation, out people, and our strategic opportunities."
Reality Check is part strategic review, part organisational listening that delivers strategy grounded in what your teams and audiences actually need. Understand what is happening before deciding what to do next.
Step 1 — Look: A review of existing materials, site visits, and desk research, delivered as an initial findings report to set a baseline.
Step 2 — Listen: Structured team and stakeholder consultations that go beyond what leadership already knows, surfacing what staff actually think, where alignment breaks down, and where the real opportunities sit.
Step 3 — Plan: Facilitated strategy workshops that turn findings into practical, prioritised recommendations your organisation can act on.
Most clients work through the full sequence. The process can also be scoped to phases 1 and 2 where a diagnostic report and consultation are what you need.
Ideal for: organisations preparing for significant investment in technology, navigating strategic change, reviewing digital or creative technology direction, or needing to align leadership around a shared strategy.
Field Guide
"We're looking to improve continuously and want guidance along the way"
Field Guide is a longer-term advisory relationship built around quarterly strategic reviews, monthly check-ins, and an embedded external perspective.
Field Guide gives you a trusted strategic voice in the room — someone who knows your organisation, understands your sector, and can challenge thinking before decisions become commitments. Field Guide works for institutions managing complex programmes and for creative technology studios navigating evolving pipelines and client relationships.
Ideal for: organisations and studios that need regular strategic input without hiring a full-time strategist.
Who Green Raven Works With
Case Study: Science Museum Group
Green Raven was engaged to lead an independent strategic review for Science Museum Group, assessing how technology in galleries and exhibitions was being used, understood, and invested in across the organisation. The project covered SMG's museums in London, Manchester, York, and Bradford and combined materials analysis, site visits, and in-depth staff consultations to surface insights that weren't visible from the leadership level alone and define strategic opportunities for change, investment, and creative development with technology.
Green Raven supports arts, culture, and heritage organisations, creative technology studios, and funding and skills bodies across the UK.
Green Raven has delivered strategic reviews for major national institutions, scoped and developed creative technology projects for independent studios, mentored creative businesses through national programmes, and provided ongoing strategic advice to organisations navigating digital transformation in the cultural sector.
Clients include Science Museum Group, The Space, Arts Council England, Creative UK, Second Home Studios, Create Central, Mercurial Dance, and Creative East.
Supported organisations include Royal Shakespeare Company, Horniman Museum, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Blast Theory, Gousto, Royal Court Theatre, Manchester Libraries, Compton Verney, Barbican, and Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Case Study: Arts Council England & Bloomberg Philanthropies — Digital Accelerator
As a strategic advisor on the Arts Council England and Bloomberg Philanthropies Digital Accelerator Programme, Green Raven supported a cohort of arts organisations including Royal Shakespeare Company, Horniman Museum, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Blast Theory, and others as they developed and delivered digital projects. The role involved providing independent strategic guidance on creative technology decisions, helping organisations navigate unfamiliar territory, and ensuring projects stayed grounded in audience need rather than novelty.
Case Study: Second Home Studios
Green Raven supports creative sector studios to win funding, develop their offer, make new partnerships, and provide strategic input for internal and client-facing needs. One example is Second Home Studios an animation company that retained Green Raven to develop an immersive and interactive strand of projects for the studio. The result was immersive commissions with StoryFutures and BFI, as well as funded digital projects with Innovate UK with commercial clients.
Why Work With Green Raven
Independent and honest
Green Raven has no partnerships with technology vendors, agencies, or platforms. Independence is a methodological choice, not just a lifestyle one. The advice is based on what will actually work for your organisation, and the findings are delivered straight, including the uncomfortable ones.
Strategic realism
I don’t apply house frameworks. Every engagement is built from the specific reality of your organisation, your audiences, and your context. The discipline behind the work is investigative and journalistic: evidence-led, triangulated, and written to be used.
Cultural experience first
Technology decisions in cultural organisations are cultural decisions first. Starting with audience experience and organisational reality produces better outcomes than starting with the tools.
Cross-sector pattern recognition
I draw on experience across journalism, broadcast, digital, animation, immersive, and emerging technology, connecting patterns that sector-specific consultants miss.
Trusted by the sector
I have worked with the UK's leading cultural organisations, creative studios, and funding bodies and is trusted over long-term engagements that deliver deep value.
"Ian was a vault of knowledge and wisdom on all things immersive technology and beyond. His understanding of the industry coupled with his vast experience as a producer and creator meant he was able to advise and guide us to solutions that otherwise wouldn't have been possible."
- Birmingham Royal Ballet
"We were incredibly lucky to work with Ian. His experience, collaborative approach, and technical knowledge were invaluable to our team during the commissioning process, helping us to navigate a completely new area of work with confidence. He also contributed some excellent ideas of his own which really enhanced the finished product."
- Manchester Libraries Trust
"Ian's extensive experience across a wide variety of digital projects and experience in both arts and culture settings, as well as more corporate applications, was invaluable. As a project mentor, he was always able to support me in finding an innovative solution or way forward."
- FACT Liverpool
About Ian Ravenscroft
I founded Green Raven in 2019 to bring a different kind of strategic support to the cultural sector: grounded in real experience, honest about what works, and focused on practical outcomes rather than theoretical frameworks. My background in digital and immersive production and head for strategy means I provide guidance based on practical actions that fit with how teams actually work.
Before Green Raven, I worked in content innovation at the BBC, wrote and produced animation for Channel 4 and Nickelodeon, and led creative projects for digital agencies in the cultural sector. I began my career as a journalist, and the investigative discipline of that training shapes how Green Raven works today: evidence-led, source-triangulated, and written to be used.
I have led strategic reviews for national museums, advised organisations through the Arts Council England and Bloomberg Philanthropies Digital Accelerator Programme, written and produced virtual reality projects for StoryFutures and the BFI with Second Home Studios, scoped and developed commercial applications of XR and immersive technologies, delivered creative technology workshops and business support programmes for Creative UK, The Space, and CreaTech Frontiers, and supported early-stage creative technology projects from concept through to delivery.
I'm passionate about the power of arts and heritage to enhance people's lives. I am motivated by helping organisations become beacons of trust in our complex world.