Associates: Abigail Carney

Abigail Carney is an independent consultant, facilitator and trainer in the culture, creative industry and tourism sectors across Scotland.

She works with Boards, management and staff teams to scope ambition and vision; identify issues and opportunities, and develop solutions and strategies to ensure that they identify, attract and retain the customers, audiences, visitors and stakeholders they need to achieve success.

Abigail uses various methods to achieve this: consultancy, facilitation, mentoring and training - all designed to build organisational capacity and develop staff skills. Abigail offers particular expertise in business planning, audience development, marketing and communications, research and evaluation.

Prior to becoming a consultant in 2004 Abigail spent twenty years as a communications and marketing practitioner developing audiences for a range of Edinburgh festivals and theatres. She was also PR and Events Development Manager at Edinburgh Tourist Board where she played a key role developing links with the arts sector and in initiating Edinburgh's Hogmanay.

Abigail has a BA in Drama from the University of Wales. She is a trainer and advisor for the Cultural Enterprise Office; Visiting Lecturer, MA Cultural Management Course, Queen Margaret University; and an assessor and advisor for Creative Scotland's digital capacity building programme 'Ambition'.

She recently returned from Vietnam where she devised and delivered a course on How to Market a Festival to 20 Vietnamese festival directors and government culture and tourism officials for the British Council.

Some examples of cultural / tourism projects:

• Lammermuir Festival (East Lothian): marketing strategy and brand development for a new international festival to attract visitors to East Lothian as a place to visit, live and work supproted by Event Scotland, East Lothian Council and Creative Scotland
  
  
• Glenkens Community & Arts Trust (Dumfries and Galloway): business and marketing planning for a multi purpose arts, tourism, enterprise, community centre in New Galloway
  
  
• Duff House, Banff (Aberdeenshire): review and research programme to inform a visitor development strategy for partners Aberdeeenshire Council, National Galleries of Scotland and Historic Scotland
  
  
• Creative Scotland (Scotland): review and development plan for the Own Art interest free buying scheme available at 45 galleries across Scotland, including digital development and marketing training for gallery owners
  
  
• Edinburgh Art Festival and Edinburgh Science Festival (Edinburgh): Board / staff workshops to facilitate the development of vision and mission, aims and objectives, markets and customers
  
  
• Spring Fling (South West Scotland): customer development and PR plan to attract visitors from the rest of Scotland and the north of England to an open studio trail involving over 100 artists and makers.

Key areas of expertise

Arts, culture, heritage - consultancy, facilitation, mentoring - audience development, business planning, marketing, PR, communications, research, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.