We’re getting in touch to introduce ourselves as your new Community Co-chairs for Scotland and the North of England. With very different experiences of Tess and the arts industry we hope we can bring a lot to these discussions to revive the community, open new conversations to share learnings, challenges, and generate new ideas.
Here’s a little bit about each of us:
Shiona Walker – Senior Membership & CRM Manager, Scottish Ballet
I joined Scottish Ballet in March 2020, so as you can imagine it’s been quite an experience! SB is the first place I have worked with Tessitura having been in a digital/marketing capacity in other arts orgs in Glasgow and London over the past 8 years.
My current role at SB involves overseeing the growth strategy of our international free membership programme to foster a sense of community within our audience of production and event attendees, class participants and email subscribers. I also work across the other admin departments to support all their Tessitura needs, whether that’s a new package of classes, ticketing for a Patron event, utilising One Page Giving for a fundraising campaign or acquiring a particularly complex report for a member of our Executive team. Currently, I’m also leading an ambitious website redevelopment project to put our Members at the heart of the experience.
Outside of work I enjoy chasing the northern lights around Scandinavia, jaunts to London to see too many musicals in one weekend, photographing pop-punk gigs in arenas and grimy basements, and hanging out with my two very spoiled cats. I look forward to learning more about all the fantastic projects our community members are working on and sharing experiences and new ideas.
Alexander Grieves – Projects & Integrations Administrator / Food & Beverage Operations Manager, Sage Gateshead
I Joined Sage Gateshead in 2013 when I was 17! So I’ve been here quite a while. I only starting using Tessitura when I joined the ICT team in 2019, where my role has developed from first line support to dealing with projects across the organisation. However I will say my knowledge of Tessitura has developed so much over the past year due to our relationship with Tessitura via Extended Services – which has honestly been one of the best things we have done as an organisation.
My role currently at Sage Gateshead could be classed as quite unique – predominately working within the ICT team, and working closely with Tessitura to develop the system and processes to improve the customer experience. This could be anything from TNEW on account credit, developing new processes for Young Musicians Programme recruitment to streamlining the box office reconciliation with the finance team. I also oversee the food and beverage operations, just to keep me busy!
Myself and Shiona both have different experiences of Tessitura that I think will allow us to bring loads to the Tessitura community and hopefully we get lots of ideas from it too!
To help us deliver the best experience for all we would love for you to complete this short survey detailing what you would hope to get out of being part of the community. We hope to deliver our first meeting in June, so let us know if this is something you’d be comfortable with us organising as an in-person event and if there are any topics you’d be keen to explore together.
https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/6849145/North-of-England-Scotland-Tessitura-Community-Interest-Survey
Speak soon!
Shiona & Alex
Many thanks for posting Shiona and Alex, looking forward to supporting you with this group in future!