Available Light Theatre Brand Strategy
Client:
Available Light Theatre
Role:
Strategist (and Board Member)
Service:
8-week Strategic Sprint
Year:
2025
Overview
Available Light Theatre is a Columbus, Ohio-based theatre company known for off-the-beaten-path shows and incredible, homegrown performances from local artists. Throughout their nearly two-decade history, they've explored many different ways of articulating and positioning their offerings to the rich theatrical community in Central Ohio.
In anticipation of their twentieth season, the company recognized their opportunity to ground their work and the impact of each stellar performance in a brand that truly expressed the dynamism of each member, performer, and artist.
As someone who's served on their Board for over a year, I had just enough context to be dangerous, but not so much context that I was bogged down by the promise and potential of all that's come before me in the expansive history of the company. This allowed me to collaboratively engage their Board and Company in a strategic sprint that helped them articulate their value in a way that felt expansive, future-forward, and authentic to their unique history.
Available Light Theatre has been a staple of the Columbus, Ohio arts scene for the past twenty years. But their brand didn't reflect their expansive and distinctive approach to world-building and the experiences their artists work tirelessly to create in the present moment.
Throughout the course of our eight-week engagement, I facilitated a focus group to understand the depth of history and foundational identity of the Company. I then collaborated with artists, Company and Board Members to better articulate and understand what the group's unique point of view, value preposition, target audience personas, and content pillars could be.
But this engagement wasn't all about high-level strategy— it was about creating resources the company could use in their social media presence, to inform future Board and Company members, and for years to come. As a result, the latter part of this engagement was all about collaboratively developing supporter journey maps that reflected opportunity areas for their communications and activating the content pillars with a social plan that drove momentum for current and future supporters.
Strategy that incorporated viewpoints from artists, collaborators, and friends to invigorate audiences and emphasize the empathy at the heart of every script, set, soundscape, and scene.
"There's a lot to love about the work that Shelby did for Available Light, the multiple facets of her approach, and the clarity she brought to our vision of how brand strategy can help us. Perhaps most notable, and most appreciated by our team, is how easy she made it. She translated the research and analysis into a plan that we could put directly into action to support our work."
Executive Director
