What if cultural organizations stopped planning to get it right the first time?
In an industry that still prizes polished premieres and long-lead seasons, the idea of prototyping — small tests, low stakes, fast feedback — feels almost subversive. But as cultural leaders navigate shifting publics, uncertain funding, and layered social demands, prototyping offers not just a method, but a mindset.
Borrowed from tech, design, and social innovation, prototyping means trying things early and often. It favors learning over perfection, iteration over certainty. When brought into the arts, prototyping allows institutions to experiment with audiences rather than presenting to them.
It’s not about failing fast. It’s about listening sooner.
From Final Product to First Draft
In traditional cultural planning, the model is linear: define, develop, deliver. But what if audiences were brought into the process sooner, before the program has a name, a venue, or a fixed format?
That’s what prototyping makes possible. It invites risk at the right scale. It de-risks the big decisions by testing small ones. And in doing so, it makes the process more democratic, more agile, and — often — more relevant.
Across the globe, a growing number of cultural institutions are exploring this approach. Here are three that are rethinking creation through iteration:
Tate Exchange – London
Located within the Tate Modern’s Blavatnik building, Tate Exchange was never just a program. It was a question: What happens when a major art institution gives over space and authorship to the public?
Launched as a prototype space for civic dialogue and co-creation, Tate Exchange invited artists, researchers, youth groups, and community organizers to shape weekly takeovers. The process was intentionally fluid. Ideas were workshopped live, in real time. Audiences weren’t just viewers — they were testers, editors, collaborators.
The program blurred the line between experiment and exhibition, and in doing so, rewired the institution’s relationship with its public.
Prototype Festival – Los Angeles
Created to fill a gap in the performing arts landscape, Prototype Festival is an annual incubator for experimental opera and performance. Think of it as a public R&D lab for boundary-pushing works.
Instead of betting big on untested productions, Prototype stages bold ideas in raw, often unconventional spaces: warehouses, street corners, vacant storefronts. The setting is provisional. The format is flexible. The audience knows they’re seeing a work in flux — which becomes part of the appeal.
By embracing the aesthetic of the unfinished, Prototype gives artists the space to explore and institutions the data to decide what comes next.
MAASive Lates – Sydney
The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney reimagined public engagement with MAASive Lates, a series of after-hours events designed as cultural experiments. Each edition was built around a theme — time, movement, disruption — and programmed collaboratively with young creatives, collectives, and technologists.
Crucially, every MAASive Late was treated as a test: Would this format work? Did the audience show up? What surprised us?
Instead of producing one-off spectacles, the museum used these nights as micro-labs to inform broader decisions around exhibition development, community engagement, and cross-sector partnerships.
The result: Insights that went beyond attendance metrics and helped shape future strategy.
Build Less. Learn More.
Prototyping doesn’t mean thinking small. It means thinking smart. In an era where cultural relevance depends on how quickly institutions adapt and whose voices they invite in, prototyping enables faster feedback, deeper connection, and more inclusive authorship.
