An arts organization’s skill, passion, creativity and quality in planning must reflect and equal its art producing abilities. AAR helps arts professionals bring the strength of their artistic process to all aspects of the strategic planning process, from articulating values, vision and mission, to goals, targets and actions, to three to five year rolling cycles that keeps the planning process timely and relevant.

Traditionally, planning has emphasized linear chronological thinking, which simultaneously encourages projecting the immediate past onto the future (hindsight), while idealizing or romanticizing future scenarios that are disconnected from the complex realities of the present and unknown exigencies of a rolling future. Such straight-line thinking and planning is one insidious way in which the status quo protects and perpetuates itself.

We’ve observed that it takes deliberate effort and actions to mitigate the natural tendencies and engage non-linear, multi-dimensional thinking and planning. This allows for an integration of appropriate elements of past, present and future into genuine insight that neither perpetuates the status quo nor fantasizes an improbable future.  Insight comes from connecting the dots – relationships, opportunities, patterns and possibilities and results in a more complex and textured view of one’s current and evolving realities.  Overall, it provides a more useful and resilient planning and problem-solving platform.