Anne James

Ways to work together

Strategy & audience

AI governance

Advisory and drafting

Build a strategic plan

Set your direction for the next three to five years with a plan built to earn the confidence of your audiences, funders and board.

Request a tailored proposal
Format
Facilitated engagement, on-site and remote
Duration
10 to 18 weeks
Participants
Director, board and senior leadership, with input from peer institutions and community partners
What you get
  • A public-facing strategic plan with a clear vision, priorities and goals
  • A findings report on what we heard from your board, funders and partners during the listening phase
  • Guidance on aligning short-term priorities and staff roles to deliver the plan’s objectives

The program includes

  1. Listen first: interviews with leadership, board, funders and key partners, alongside a review of your audience data.
  2. Read the landscape: funding, visitor trends, technology and regulation, including where AI fits and where it doesn’t.
  3. Set priorities with your leadership team in facilitated working sessions.
  4. Draft the plan with a clear vision, priorities and goals that are realistic for your resources.
  5. Present and hand over to your board, with a light process for checking progress each year.

Research

Community listening

Find out what your communities want from you before you commit to a major redevelopment, funding bid, or visitor-facing AI.

Request a tailored proposal
Format
Listening sessions, interviews, short surveys and on-site observation
Duration
4 to 12 weeks
Participants
Local community, peers and funders, and front-of-house staff, depending on the question
What you get
  • A findings report to support your funding applications
  • A baseline score, such as how welcome people feel, that you can re-measure each year
  • Programming recommendations tied to what you heard
  • A plan to report back to the people who took part

The program includes

  1. Set the questions and the measures: what you need to learn, whose voices are missing, and the two or three things you’ll track over time.
  2. Design the approach: who to invite, where to meet, and how personal data is protected.
  3. Listen: sessions, interviews and a short survey, held where people already gather rather than only in the museum.
  4. Analyse and benchmark: code and count what you heard, break results down by group, and compare them with sector data such as AAM’s annual survey of museum-goers on trust and AI.
  5. Turn findings into recommendations and close the loop with the people who took part.

Business strategy

Build a growth strategy

Find out where your next audiences and patrons will come from, and tune up the digital and operational side of your institution to reach them.

Request a tailored proposal
Format
Like borrowing a Chief Marketing Officer for a targeted growth project, remote or on-site
Duration
8 to 12 weeks
Participants
Director, board and senior team
What you get
  • An up-to-date market report: the audience and funding opportunities open to you now, and the ones you’re under-using
  • Two growth scenarios with financial modelling, aligned to your strategic plan
  • A roadmap of digital and operational changes, ranked by the return they’ll bring

The program includes

  1. Review your income mix: public funding, philanthropy, partnerships, memberships, and earned income such as sales and space hire, benchmarked against comparable institutions.
  2. Review how you operate: ticketing, CRM, website, retail, venue hire and digital programming, to find where friction is costing you visitors and revenue.
  3. Talk to the people who fund you, and those who could: a survey of current and lapsed members, funders and prospects, to learn what moves them to give.
  4. Test one or two bets with small pilots before committing budget.
  5. Set priorities and targets that are realistic for your team’s capacity, and hand over a plan that helps your existing team get more from the same effort, or gives a new hire a clear brief from day one.

Policy and standards

Build an AI governance framework

Define the principles, roles and review steps that guide how your institution adopts AI, then publish your standards so visitors and funders can see where you stand.

Request a tailored proposal
Format
Embedded engagement, on-site and remote
Duration
8 to 12 weeks
Participants
Digital, collections, legal, communications and visitor-experience leads
What you get
  • A framework your team can apply on a normal Tuesday
  • A public statement of your AI standards, including how you’ll tell visitors when AI is involved
  • Named decision owners and a review process

The program includes

  1. Map current and planned AI use across collections, visitor tools, marketing and back-office systems.
  2. Assess the risks to public trust, provenance, source communities, staff and donor privacy.
  3. Draft principles and decision rules with your leadership team, including who signs off and when.
  4. Publish your standards: turn your key decisions into a plain-language public statement that builds trust with visitors, funders and source communities.
  5. Set up a lightweight review process for new tools, vendors and pilots, and hand over the framework with a plan to revisit it as regulation and practice change.

Training

AI skills training for staff

Practical, jargon-free sessions that help teams use AI tools with good judgment and know when to stop and ask.

Request a tailored proposal
Format
In-person or live online workshops
Duration
Half day or full day
Participants
Mixed teams across departments (max. 15 people)
What you get
  • A shared vocabulary and confidence with AI tools
  • Rules of thumb for everyday use
  • Clear points to escalate risky cases

The program includes

  1. What AI tools actually do and where they fail, with examples from museum work.
  2. Hands-on exercises with the tools your team already uses.
  3. Spotting risks: accuracy, bias, copyright, privacy and community protocols.
  4. Working with your policy: what is allowed, what needs review, and who to ask.
  5. A take-home guide tailored to your organization.

Workshop

Tool and vendor procurement workshop

Learn what to ask before you buy or renew an AI-enabled tool, and how to read the answers.

Request a tailored proposal
Format
Facilitated workshop with your procurement, legal and digital teams
Duration
Half day
Participants
Procurement, legal, IT and the teams requesting tools (max. 12 people)
What you get
  • A reusable vendor question checklist
  • A simple approach to comparing vendors
  • A short decision record template

The program includes

  1. Frame the decision: what problem the tool should solve, and what could go wrong.
  2. Walk through the vendor questions: data use, training on your content, security, hosting and exit terms.
  3. Read real vendor claims and terms together and spot the gaps.
  4. Score a live example from your own shortlist.
  5. Agree on your review steps and who signs off.

“Where do we stand on AI?”

It’s becoming a standard question from boards, and “we’re looking into it” won’t hold for long. I can help you reach a position you can explain and defend.

Get in touch