Joss Luckin, Senior Consultant, MHM (Manchester, U.K.)

Joss Luckin is a Senior Consultant with MHM. Over the past 15 years, he has worked with cultural organisations around the world to deepen audience understanding and strengthen public impact. His experience spans a wide range of institutions and artforms, from the Smithsonian Institution and the British Film Institute to Glyndebourne Opera to At-Turaif.

His work covers many of the core challenges facing cultural organisations today, including audience diversification and growth, visioning and planning, membership, visitor experience, and organisational change.

With a background in ethnography and insight research, Joss brings a rigorous, evidence-led approach to understanding audiences, underpinned by a deep curiosity about culture, behaviour, and public engagement.

Debbie Spence,
Director, MHM (Manchester, U.K.)

With a background in psychology and design thinking, Debbie works at the intersection of audience behaviour, brand strategy and organisational change.

She works internationally with governments, policymakers, museums, galleries, theatres, cultural districts and occasionally football clubs helping organisations unlock growth, relevance and connection.

Her work combines insight, strategy and co-creation, with a particular interest in human centred design. She is known for bringing together rigorous thinking, sharp provocation and practical application. 

Debbie is a published writer, most recently in the Journal of Brand Strategy, and regularly speaks internationally on audience strategy, cultural value and the evolving role of cultural institutions in society.

She should never be left alone with cheese or Scotch, and will defriend anyone who puts pineapple on pizza.

Trust, Culture Wars and the Role of Cultural Institutions

Culture has always been contested. It is where societies work through memory, identity, power and change. So when museums, theatres, galleries and heritage organisations are pulled into polarised debates, it is not a sign that culture has gone wrong. It is a sign that culture still matters.

In this 15-minute keynote, Debbie Spence and Joss Luckin from MHM will share a practical perspective on trust in a fractured cultural landscape. Drawing on MHM’s work with cultural organisations around the world, they will explore how audience insight, community closeness and co-creation can help institutions move beyond reactive decision-making and act with greater confidence.

This session is for cultural leaders and communicators who know that neutrality is no longer a safe hiding place, but who also reject the idea that every institution must become a megaphone in the culture wars.

They’ll argue that trust is not built through silence, slogans or trying to please everyone. It is built through purpose, proximity and practice knowing what you stand for, staying close to the people in your communities, and acting consistently when it counts.

In a noisy world, cultural institutions have a vital role to play: not as referees above society, but as civic spaces within it.

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.