Category Archives: Digital Innovation

The next frontier: AI and the Arts

I was grateful to be invited by Business/Arts’ artsvest national program to develop and present a brand new 90-minute workshop on AI Tools for Smaller Arts Organizations. This workshop was first presented virtually to a national live audience of about 65 participants on October 8, 2025.

AI is no longer mere hype—it’s already reshaping how organizations across many sectors work including in the arts. Ready or not, AI is here and it is improving rapidly. In this session we will talk about what AI is good and bad at and how you can decide where to use AI tools in your organization.

AI Tools for Smaller Arts Organizations Workshop by Inga Petri, Chief Strategist and AI Expert in the Arts, October 2025

This hands-on virtual workshop cuts through the noise and focuses on practical tools you can use right now to save time, stretch resources, and sharpen your communications. We’ll look at embedded AI tools in your office productivity software, operating system level AI, and we’ll take a deeper dive into Generative AI. You’ll learn how to decide whether to use AI for everyday tasks: drafting grants, marketing copy and materials; analyzing data; or streamlining admin tasks. We’ll explore affordable AI tools that fit into the systems you already use, from Canva, Mailchimp to presentations and spreadsheets, and highlight where automation could free up your team’s time.

We’ll also leave you with a simple governance checklist to keep your organization’s data, voice, and values safe. This session is designed for staff and board members who need clarity, not jargon, and want to see real-world results for their time and effort.

To book this workshop or a custom tailored working session for your group, get in touch with Inga Petri.

On the spectrum of AI capabilities

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not a single monolithic technology but a spectrum of capabilities that range from basic automation to highly sophisticated generative and agentic systems. For small arts organizations, clarity about these distinctions is critical. It allows leaders to separate hype from reality and make grounded choices about how to incorporate AI into their workflows.

Ethical AI Use

Ethical use of predictive and generative AI in the arts requires an evolution of your organization's data governance. A general categorization of low, medium and high risk AI uses.

While AI tools offer transformative potential, their adoption raises serious ethical and governance questions. For arts organizations that act as stewards of culture, creativity, and community trust, responsible use of AI is non-negotiable.

Privacy and Data Security

AI systems often require access to organizational or audience data. Whether training an AI on past grant reports or allowing cloud-based tools to process ticketing data, organizations must safeguard personal information. Under Canadian privacy law—including the **Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)**—organizations are obligated to secure data, limit its use, and obtain meaningful consent.

11 Digital Workshops Available Online

PADE (Puppetry Arts Digital Evolution) project aimed to increase access to digital tools, resources and skills for puppeteers, multidisciplinary artists and arts organizations. Through this national initiative, we shared, learnt and planned how best to implement digital knowledge and tools into individual and joint digital discoverability, marketing, and strategic future plans.

All sessions were designed and facilitated by Inga Petri, Strategic Moves. These 11 workshops cover digital literacy and intelligence material that Inga developed for Making Tomorrow Better. These insights and more were shared with the Canadian arts presenting sector over 3 years from 2019 to 2021. This latest series is current as of March 2022.

The Fundamentals Series
Beyond the Fundamentals (From Search to Discoverability)
Understanding Digital Business Opportunities and Revenue Models

Workshop Series 1 – Fundamentals

Workshop 1.1: Building an Effective Online Presence Assessment (60 min)

Workshop 1.2: Creating web content that connects with your audiences (75 min)

Workshop 1.4: Mastering Google (75 min)

Workshop Series 2 – Beyond Fundamentals: From Search to Discoverability

Workshop 2.1: Assessment SEO (75 min)

Workshop 2.2: Machine-Readable Content (90 min)

Workshop 2.3: Wikidata – Linked, Open Data/Wikidata (60 min)

Workshop 2.4: Discoverability Review (60 min)

Watch workshop recording

Workshop Series 3 – Digital Business Opportunities and Revenue

Workshop 3.1: Digital Value Chain (90 min)

Workshop 3.2 – Hybrid Business Models

Workshop 3.3 – Digital Business Tools

Project Partners

SpringWorks Festival / Hermione Presents (SWF)
Crane Creations Theatre Company (CCTC)
Ryga Arts Festival (RAF)
Supporting Performing Arts in Rural & Remote Communities (SPARC)
Association Quebecois des Marionnettistes (AQM)
Ontario Puppetry Association (OPA)

Rebuilding Better – Vision for the Performing Arts 2022

I’ve been speaking at two in-person conferences recently (Contact East 2021 in Moncton and Pacific Contact 2022 in Coquitlam) on the hot button topic of Rebuilding Better. I have been proposing this Radical Intent (aka vision) for the Performing Arts as the sector tries to emerge from the worst of the COVID restrictions. The presentation has been called inspiring and has been generating much hallway conversation. So here it is.

My Radical Intent for the Performing Arts to Truly Rebuild Better.

1. Stop doing more with less. Breathe. Go for a walk in the woods, on the beach, in the mountains. Educate your funders to help them see how your effectiveness as an arts worker matters more than pushing out sheer volume.

2. Do less with more! Good pay, reasonable hours, improve mental health, improve working conditions. Take care of each other, be there: we are in this together.

3. Embrace digital connection. It is real and it is rapidly growing, if you like it or not is immaterial!
Go ahead and assess digital opportunities in your context, your community and your organization and build digital business lines if it makes sense.
Think about what it looks like to meaningfully disseminate or present live arts digitally. Learn about and adopt industry backbone application (The Pitch, I want to showcase, block booking, PPN, Side door)

4. Be the change you want to see. #MeToo, #blm, #truthandreconciliation

Act, don’t leave it at paying lip service; when its just words and intentions without action, folks see right through it – always.

5. Engage the public through the arts, not merely in the arts.
Climate change, housing availability, precarious employment, living wages/guaranteed income, fear-based politics / elections, dis- and mis-information, online bully pulpits – so many topics that could be made better for the majority of people as well as systemically marginalized people through creative and artistic interventions

6. Make a big difference in your community. What are the conversations that need to be had locally? Hot button issues? Get involved and convene people in conversations, curate shows to reflect on the issues, host solution summits.

Yukon Entrepreneur Podcast – Interview with Inga Petri – 2022

Thanks to host Kari Johnston who interviewed me as part of her Yukon Entrepreneurs Podcast series. Kari has been talking to Yukon business people about how they are deploying, leveraging, changing or transitioning their business models during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the case or Strategic Moves, demand skyrocketed as a result of our reputation for digital expertise and having championed digital adoption in the live arts sector in Canada over a decade. COVID simply unleashed the urgent demand to make sense of the digital world, as well as advancing on key organizational pressures, from equity, diversity and inclusion to elevating strategic planning work to a far more actionable, meaningful level.

Listen in!

Imagine Yukon’s Awesome, Global Digital Presence

On November 20, 2020, 31 Yukoners gathered via Zoom to talk to each other about big ideas from the starting points of:

How can we build a true Yukon digital platform to put our collective foot forward to the vast online population?

What would Yukoners and Yukon businesses have to build together to achieve such an awesome, global online presence? What kinds of content would we need to have, what kinds of digital technologies would we use to create awesome digital experiences, and what kind of visionary web presence would we create to be a global online force?

Here is the full zoom recording with annotated chapter markers as well as a written summary report:

REPORT on Imagining Yukon’s Awesome Global Digital Presence Download

Several Yukon-led territorial and national projects were featured as part of the exchange of ideas and experiences:

https://yfnarts.ca/ – online store for Yukon Indigenous arts and products (Charlene Alexander, YFNCTA)
https://yukononlinemarket.ca/ – just launched online store for artisans and crafters (Jasmine Roush, Willow Gamberg, Yukon)
https://availablelight.watch/ – launched in October 2019, ALD makes Yukon films and shorts available to Yukoners and the world for viewing and renting (Braden Brickner, Yukon)
https://digitalartsnation.ca/ – national digital literacy and intelligence project (Inga Petri, Yukon)
http://digitalinnovationcouncil.ca/ – conversations, insights from digital practitioners in the arts and culture sector (Inga Petri, Yukon)
https://yukonorganics.ca/ – sharing food orders to get high quality foods into remote locations at good prices (Scott McKenzie, Yukon)
Creative Lab North (Melaina Sheldon & Jayden Soroka, Yukon) – in development
ThePitch.ca: Online Showcase for the Performing Arts (Debbie Peters, Yukon) – in development
Yukon Transportation Museum – developing digital products and services (Janna Swales, Yukon) – in development

Guest speakers also contributed greatly to the conversation by expanding on approaches to digital technologies and opportunities: Tammy Lee, Culture Creates (Montreal), Margaret Lam, Bemused Network (Waterloo, ON)

For more on Inga’s digital vision take a listen to Yukon Entrepreneur Podcast Series recorded as part of Yukon Innovation Week 2020.

Designing Awesome Online Conferences

As an online conference organizer you have an awesome opportunity to create something far better than what we are accustomed to in the physical world.

The sudden rush to digital due to COVID-19 has made video meetings an anywhere, anytime reality for many in the arts and culture sector, and beyond. From online staff meetings to live performances delivered digitally, one-to-one and one-to-many video conferencing has proven its ability to keep us connected, keep us working together and keep moving forward.

Early in the pandemic response in March 2020 we saw quick pivots toward digital events and conferences. They made clear: event organizers, hosts and speakers – many relative newcomers to these digital spaces – needed to make the leap toward digital engagement, learning and interaction.

The bottom line is: your digital conference or online event has real costs, requires different skills to produce and host well, and you have to figure out how to raise the revenue you need to make it sustainable.

Through Future Perfect, we have been researching and evolving a strong framework for a new breed of digital conferences which are more engaging, more accessible, more affordable, and minimize the digital divide that impedes communities with less access to high-speed internet from participating fully online.

PDF SERIES for download: How to design and deliver awesome digital experiences

Webpages with this same content

Fundamentals (PDF1)
Design (PDF1)
Digital Tools (PDF1)
From Attendee to Participant in 7 steps (PDF2)
Accessibility and Inclusion (PDF3)
Online Conference Cost Drivers (PDF4)
Setting Registration Price (PDF4)
Sponsorship (PDF4)
Tips for Speakers (PDF5)

The BC Museums Association and Heritage BC have embarked together on Future Perfect, an initiative funded by the Canada Council for the Arts’ Digital Strategy Fund. Led by Inga Petri, Strategic Moves with invaluable support from Lynn Feasey, Points North Consulting, and Jason Guille, Stream Of Consciousness and Felicity Buckell.

Interview about Digital Innovation in the age of COVID-19

As part of Yukon Innovation Week, Kari Johnston interviewed Inga Petri about her work in arts & culture in the digital world. I discuss my mission to help artists and arts & culture organizations use digital technologies in profound and new ways and build successful digital business models. It’s not about merely building a website, but about leveraging the latest web technologies and ways in which web 3.0 works to secure viable spaces for artistic and cultural expression and experiences.

Part of Yukon Entrepreneur Podcast Series