Challenge

Climbing Turn identified a clear gap: the lack of a dedicated planning and scheduling tool tailored specifically for national and international touring performing arts organisations.

For theatres, dance companies, orchestras, operas, and circuses, coordinating tours is a highly complex task. Ensuring that the right people are in the right place at the right time, for rehearsals, performances, and travel, requires significant manual effort and coordination.

A key challenge lies in how historical data is used – or underused. Many performing arts organisations aren’t making the best use of historic, valuable data when planning and scheduling new tours. Information such as venue details, financial reports, and past tour logistics is often fragmented, inconsistently formatted, or not centrally stored. As a result, producers frequently find themselves starting from scratch when planning new tours.

Existing event tools fall short. Most scheduling platforms are designed for smaller-scale touring, such as bands, and do not accommodate the scale, complexity, and specific requirements of performing arts organisations.

AI solution

To address this gap, Climbing Turn developed StageSwift, a digital platform designed for performing arts organisations to simplify and streamline tour planning and scheduling.

StageSwift combines industry data insights from sources including Statistica, PwC, IBISWorld, MRFR, and Arts Council England with a targeted understanding of user needs. Based on a conservative estimate of 35,165 relevant organisations, Climbing Turn identified a potential global market worth £4.5 million.

StageSwift boasts many features, with one being an AI-powered agent that transforms how organisations interact with their historical data. Instead of manually searching through records, users can simply ask questions such as:

• Have we been to this venue before?
• How many tickets did we sell?
• Which lighting technicians did we work with?

The system then retrieves and synthesises the relevant information instantly.
This capability significantly reduces time spent on research, as well as the administrative time managing calls and emails with freelancers. In addition, the AI agent supports automated report generation, further streamlining workflows.

Results and impact

Climbing Turn conducted a feasibility study on StageSwift earlier this year with a range of performing arts organisations. The results were very positive, with participants highlighting the platform’s potential to save considerable time and stress associated with planning and scheduling new tours.

With these results, Climbing Turn is now preparing to launch StageSwift to market next year. The long-term vision includes continuously enhancing the platform with additional AI-driven features to further improve efficiency and user experience.

Innovate UK BridgeAI support

Before participating in the BridgeAI programme, Climbing Turn’s main challenge was enabling the AI agent to generate accurate responses using complete datasets, rather than partial or fragmented information.

Through BridgeAI, the company received expert guidance from a Scientific Advisor at The Alan Turing Institute, who identified function calling as a solution to this problem.

In addition, Climbing Turn attended BSI’s AI Standards for SMEs webinar. As a result, the company now plans to adopt the AI Management System Standard ISO/IEC 42001:2023, embedding best practices into its AI development process.

Lessons learned and future plans

Climbing Turn remains focused on launching StageSwift next year and progressively expanding its AI capabilities.

The company also plans to continue its journey toward adopting AI standards, ensuring that its solutions are not only innovative but also robust, reliable, and aligned with emerging best practices.

Reflecting on the journey so far, Dorothy Molloy, Director of StageSwift, commented:

The BridgeAI grant has given us the time to find interested parties and gather information on the most desirable uses for the AI in this project. Most importantly, it has enabled us to learn how to use generative AI and the tactics that we can employ to overcome its limitations. Without the grant, we would not have been able to experiment and find the best solutions.