Debbie Spence, Strategy Director, MHM (London, U.K.)

Debbie Spence is Strategy Director at MHM, where she brings a human-centred perspective to audience strategy. With a background in design thinking, she transforms data into meaning and meaning into action. Debbie helps cultural organisations across Europe, Australia, and the Gulf to rethink how they connect with audiences — focusing on building trust, emotional resonance, and loyalty. Her work combines nuance, bold thinking, and strategic clarity to move cultural conversations forward.

WORKSHOP - Design Thinking for Brand Strategy. Co-creating Brands to Build Trust

In a sector under pressure to be relevant, inclusive, and trusted, many organisations are rethinking their brand. But too often, arts brands are reduced to awkward away days about logos or developed behind closed doors rather than built as a shared ambition.

In a world where audiences are sceptical, distracted, and spoilt for choice, that’s no longer enough.

This workshop is a hands-on rethink of how brand strategy actually gets made and why the usual top-down approach so often produces something worthy… and widely ignored.

Drawing on MHM’s work across the globe Debbie Spence Director at MHM will take you through a practical, design-led process for building brand strategy with people, not for them.

Together, we’ll explore how to move:

• from brand as identity to brand as lived experience

• from polished statements to ideas people actually believe in

• from “the strategy” to something that drives decisions for your organisation

Expect to get stuck in. This isn’t a passive listen.

You’ll work through the building blocks of brand strategy — ambition, purpose, audience, proposition using exercises designed to unlock thinking and surface tensions.

You’ll leave with:

• practical tools you can use straight away

• a clearer process for co-creating brand strategy

• and probably a healthy suspicion of your current brand guidelines

The brands that build trust aren’t the ones that look good on paper. They’re the ones people recognise, feel, and choose to be part of.