Deventer Schouwburg developed the vision for the theater’s future

During a recent session, Gaby, who is leading an innovation project for Deventer Schouwburg (Theater), shared her first experience using ECHO to process stakeholder input for developing a bottom-up vision for the theater's future.

Key Insight: The Power of Event Design

"If I were to do it again," Gaby reflected, "now that I've seen the host dashboard, I realise how crucial the initial event setup is." This insight from her first hands-on experience highlights how seeing the dashboard analytics in the host dashboard helped her understand the importance of thoughtful event design in the participant portal.

Speed to Insights

What stood out was the immediate impact on workflow efficiency. "The speed of working is very pleasant - being able to deliver by the end of the day," Gaby noted. In the context of gathering and processing diverse stakeholder perspectives for a theater's future vision, this quick turnaround from participant input to actionable insights proves particularly valuable.

Outcomes of day one.

After the breakout sessions, we asked ECHO to make a list of up to ten themes to complete the statement “the theatre is …”. This gave us a direct feedback to the participants that we validated with Dembrane VERIFY rated choice voting.

Results of Dembrane VERIFY.

Beyond Surface-level Conversations

Gaby recognised ECHO's potential for deeper analysis: "We have so many meetings. If you could distill what's being said there... especially that undercurrent, there's real value there." This observation points to the tool's ability to uncover not just explicit suggestions but also the underlying patterns in stakeholder feedback - crucial for developing an authentic, community-driven vision for a cultural institution.

Learning Through Practice

Gaby's candid reflection on her learning process - "I learned that I need to formulate my questions well" - offers valuable insights for other hosts planning their first ECHO events. It emphasises how thoughtful question design can help transform loose discussions into structured, actionable insights.

This blog was written using ECHO. This case shows how ECHO can support bottom-up innovation in arts organisations, while maintaining the authenticity of Gaby's first-hand experience, recorded by Eve using the ECHO portal.