The Choir Friendly Venue Research Project is a collaborative R&D initiative, part-funded by Innovate UK through its Design Foundations funding, and bringing together Choirfarm, Conveenie and LIVE to explore how digital tools and AI can help choirs and venues find each other, plan better and perform more.
At its heart is a simple but persistent problem: choirs struggle to find the right venues, and venues struggle to reach choirs. To understand what is really going on, we spent the latter half of 2025 speaking with choir leaders, venue managers, singers and industry professionals.
One of the most valuable things to emerge from our research is a clearer picture of how choir events actually unfold—not just on concert day, but across the full arc of planning, promotion, delivery and follow-up.
We have evolved our thinking to better reflect the reality of staging live music, and we are now calling this the 6Ps framework. This mini blog series maps it out.
Drawing on insights from over 50 interviews, the series examines the operational lifecycle of a choir event—from gauging viability through to long-term sustainability.
Each blog looks at a key stage in the process, and using quotes gathered through the research, highlights both the strategic considerations and the lived experiences behind successful performances.
Stage 1 — Programme: This stage covers the crucial year- or term-level decision about whether to put on an event at all. It is about assessing availability, selecting repertoire, and weighing the viability of the project before the date is even set. This remains the vital first step in our lifecycle.
Stage 2 — Plan: Once the event is confirmed, the focus shifts to detailed performance planning. This stage covers logistics, running order, resourcing, and venue confirmation. It is the operational backbone where we transform the initial idea of the concert into a concrete plan of action.
Stage 3 — Prepare: This is the stage covers performer and venue readiness immediately ahead of the event: rehearsals, acoustic acclimatisation, technical setup, and volunteer briefing. While often folded into general planning, we have found that Prepare deserves its own place in the framework because it is distinct work that happens in a different mode, at a different time, and with different people.
Stage 4 — Promote: Marketing a choir concert relies on both community and strategy. This stage looks at how choirs promote events and fill seats, principally through their own community and performer networks rather than paid advertising, while managing the challenges of audience fatigue.
Stage 5 — Perform: Concert day itself reveals the complexity behind the event. Everything from transport and staging transitions to safeguarding and audience experience needs to come together as smoothly as possible. This stage highlights the often invisible labour of performance day and the systems that can reduce stress while maintaining event quality.
Stage 6 — Proof: This final stage serves as a vital pivot point for the future. Post-event administration, impact capture, member recruitment, and funder reporting are not just housekeeping—they are the structured evidence-gathering that makes the next event viable. By focusing on Proof, we are signalling that this is the mechanism that allows an organisation to make the case for future investment and sustain its activity over time.
Together, these six stages offer a practical framework for understanding choir events not as isolated performances, but as repeatable cycles—with processes and strategies that can be refined, strengthened and scaled. Whether you're a choir leader planning your next concert or a venue looking to better support the groups you host, we hope this series gives you a roadmap to refine your processes and strengthen your impact. We have expanded our blog series to cover all six posts, so keep an eye out for deep dives into each stage in the coming weeks.
