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Anyone who has ever worked in theatre knows the quiet power of a great stage manager. They don't appear under the lights, but they hold everything together — coordinating moving parts, anticipating issues, keeping people informed, and creating the conditions for creativity to thrive.
Behind every ISTA festival, TAPS, FRAME or workshop sits a similar kind of unseen work: the systems and structures that keep everything moving. And just like in a theatre production, when those systems don't fit, the whole process becomes harder than it needs to be.
In the arts, we know the feeling of trying to make our creative world fit into tools never designed for it. Anyone who has tried to squeeze an arts programme into a one-size-fits-all planning tool, curriculum template or administrative platform knows that mismatch well. Arts teachers feel it every time they try to fit messy, collaborative, unpredictable creative work into neat boxes that simply weren't built for it.
Over the past two years, we've been reshaping that story for ISTA.
When I became Executive Director, I realised that our ways of working had grown organically over decades. They had heart and history, but they weren't built with the scale, complexity or global rhythm of a modern international arts charity. If we were going to grow, strengthen the member experience and build for the future, we needed something that truly reflected who we are. In short, we needed our own stage manager.
Why we need systems that understand us
ISTA events don't behave like corporate conferences. They don't follow predictable templates, repetitive cycles or standardised workflows. Every ISTA experience has its own artistic brief, ensemble process, shifting timeline, artist team, travel plan, host-school context and global community behind it.
We tried the off-the-shelf systems — several of them. Not one understood the human, creative and deeply specific nature of what we do.
Eventually the choice became clear: continue forcing ISTA into tools never designed for organisations like ours, or build something that finally fits.
Building something designed for who we are
Enter Patrick Kool, a Netherlands-based developer whose rare gift is not only technical skill, but an ability to understand people — and, remarkably, to understand ISTA. Patrick didn't arrive with a product to sell. He arrived with curiosity. With patience. With a genuine desire to understand how a global arts charity actually works. He sat with us, asked the right questions, challenged long-held assumptions, and helped us gently unpick processes we had kept simply because they were familiar.
Together, we built STAGE Manager — the Student, Teacher & Artist Global Events Manager — a bespoke system shaped entirely around the real needs of ISTA's international arts education ecosystem. Not adapted. Not squeezed. Designed.
Not a workaround.
Not a compromise.
A system designed with us, for us.
And, like any great stage manager, it works quietly behind the scenes so everything else can shine.
The difference it's already making
For the first time, bookings, programme details, artist logistics, membership information and host-school requirements all sit together in one clear, consistent place for our team. It feels more intuitive, more transparent and, most importantly, more 'ISTA' — a structure that finally reflects the way arts learning actually works.
As a result, our community is beginning to experience clearer communication, easier planning, better access to information and smoother support. This isn't simply an internal improvement; it's a shift that strengthens our whole ISTA ecosystem.
Evolving right along with us
This work sits at the heart of our 2025 to 2030 strategy: strengthening our core systems, expanding the Member Portal, refining our communication tools and shaping the ISTA Hub as a genuine home for community connection. Better systems give us time back for creativity, bring clarity to our members and give ISTA the foundation it needs to grow with purpose.
We know that creative processes do not move in straight lines. Teachers, artists and students live this every day, so our systems should reflect it too. STAGE Manager is our way of building a system that works like an ensemble: responsive, connected and built on collaboration.
For ISTA this marks the start of a new era: more intentional, more coherent and far better equipped to support a global community doing extraordinary creative work.
Standby for Act II — places, please.
