Boardroom to the box office.
AI for Arts and Culture.
Strategy, training, and implementation for cultural organizations ready to build with AI.
From regional theaters to globally-recognized museums and concert halls, I help arts leaders find their new pace in a fast-changing world.
Who I Work With
Small and Mid-Sized Cultural Organizations (< $20M budgets)
You’re creative, pragmatic, and running lean. You don’t need more software… you need focus and guidance and strategic AI that delivers impact. You need direction and signal amid AI noise.
What we do together:
Assess AI readiness org-wide — people, process, and tools.
Map realistic AI opportunities.
Create lightweight AI governance and rollout plans that boards and foundations can back and your staff can rally behind.
Large Institutions ( $20M +)
You’re balancing innovation with reputation. Lots of departments. Need for coherence and strategic AI that embraces large-org data and complexity. You need someone who understands your world and lives at the tech forefront to save you translation time and cycles.
What we do together:
Align leadership around a shared AI modernization agenda.
Build policies and structures that make AI work and foster repeatable innovation and exploration org-wide.
Translate AI potential into compliance-safe, fundable action that brings real value.
Foundations, Alliances and Consortia
You’re supporting the sector — balancing vision, accountability, and impact. I help you see across portfolios, benchmark readiness, and fund modernization that’s measurable and ethical. Modernization as sector strategy.
Mapping your AI future.
Step 1: Preparation
Implementing AI without understanding your staff’s mindset, a researched lines-of-sight roadmap and a clear governance policy is not wise. Don’t be that organization.
Get ready for AI
Staff Readiness Assessment
Evaluate your team’s AI fluency and readiness. Measure your team’s skills, confidence and current usage of AI. Identify training opportunities, cultural gaps or process shifts needed. This prep step is crucial.
Get ready for AI
AI Roadmapping
I overlay your current business practices with modern AI capabilities, saving you time researching hype from feasibility. My focus is whole-org, whole-customer. We narrow or widen the scope as you wish.
Get ready for AI
Governance and Policy Design
Create policy and guardrails that keep your organization’s data and reputation safe and fundable. Working with your leadership group, we define a responsible, mission-aligned set of AI policies and guardrails, leaving your Board and staff with clear understanding of how AI can be used cross-company.
Step 2: Implement and build
Pilot, test and scale AI responsibly in your organization.
Use AI
Design and build modern
AI solutions
Translate strategy into working AI — whether that's custom-built tools, managed vendor selection, or implementation of existing platforms. Start with momentum-building pilots that prove value fast.
Use AI
Test for accuracy, bias, and fit
Measure how AI actually performs in your workflows before committing. We evaluate accuracy, bias, security, and whether the tool solves the problem it was meant to solve. No AI implementation should run without proper testing and monitoring.
Use AI
Scale safely
Move to production with proper security, data protections, and change management. Includes staff rollout, training guidance, and ongoing governance so AI doesn't become shadow IT.
Step 3: Transform and build momentum
AI reflects and drives wider cultural change within. That needs different organizational muscle I help you build.
Harness the momentum
AI training for every level
From board-level briefings to hands-on workshops for frontline staff. Build AI fluency across your organization, not just awareness. Support your staff as they build confidence and good “AI sense” to use these tools effectively and responsibly. Tailored to arts and culture.
Harness the momentum
Leadership and innovation sprint
AI implementation is major organizational change. Technology decisions and cultural adaptation are inseparable. I bring decades of design thinking, org strategy, and nonprofit business model expertise to C-suite advising that connects your AI investments to your mission (not just your IT roadmap.)
Harness the momentum
Innovation studio in-residence
An embedded, ongoing partnership where I work alongside your team to build the muscle for continuous experimentation. Design, prototype, and ship real AI-powered tools and workflows — not as one-off projects, but as a permanent capability your organization owns.
The future isn’t about new tools. . .
It’s about building organizations that can adapt at the speed of technology while getting stronger and better at their mission.
I’m Kristin Darrow.
From boardroom to box office, I help cultural orgs build with AI.
I help arts and culture organizations build with AI - strategy, implementation, training, and the organizational change that makes it stick.
I know this sector because I spent 20 years in it. First at the Baltimore Symphony, then as a founding exec and Chief Product Officer at Tessitura, the leading CRM/ticketing/fundraising platform for nonprofit arts and culture.
I know technology leadership because I coached it at scale — working with Marty Cagan's group to help private sector tech companies adopt the Product Operating Model and move like the best innovator companies in the world.
Now I'm connecting all of that to help cultural organizations modernize in the AI era.
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