Building Goose: How Heritage Professionals Are Co-creating the Future of AI and Peer-powered Marketing Support

Carol Jones is the Editor of the Arts Marketing Association’s knowledge exchange hub, CultureHive and Innovation Lead for a National Heritage Lottery funded project that is developing Goose, an AI and community-driven knowledge exchange platform. 

Carol has been a frequent speaker at national and international conferences, and also led the marketing module on the highly regarded MA in Arts Management at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama until 2024.  

Following the announcement of Goose in July, Carol discusses the process of developing this AI platform and how it aims to support the heritage sector. 

Building Goose: How Heritage Professionals Are Co-creating the Future of AI and Peer-powered Marketing Support 

When you're the only marketing person at a cultural organisation, who do you turn to when you need to brainstorm a visitor campaign or troubleshoot a social media crisis? Of course, there’s lots of external expert advice available from talented agencies like Mobius, consultants and freelancers – but for many small heritage organisations without specialist marketing staff, budget constraints mean the answer is often “no one”.

This doesn’t just impact small heritage organisations. The benefits of being able to access 24/7, free advice to support everyday work can be a game-changer especially when that support is relevant to your art/heritage type and draws on trusted sources and the experience of your peers. 

How Goose Supports Heritage Professionals 

Goose is as an AI-powered "thinking partner” that is guided by trusted resources and users sharing their own insights. Co-designed by over 50 heritage organisations, the platform will understand heritage contexts and be able to tackle everything from developing social media strategies for reaching new audiences to creating accessibility action plans. 

Users will be able to access specialist expertise through AI personas called ‘Thinking Partners’ that tap into role-specific knowledge of AI personas from events professionals and community engagement specialists to accessibility experts and fundraisers. While custom Thinking Partners can be created and tailored to each organisation’s unique needs.

Trusted sources integration will draw on trusted AMA resources and peer knowledge from across the sector, while live document creation will allow users to build marketing documents such as visitor engagement strategies and SMART objectives with input from tailored Thinking Partners.

Transforming Heritage Marketing 

The implications for arts and heritage marketing extend beyond individual organisations. Goose represents a fundamental shift toward democratising marketing expertise across the sector. Every user will become a co-designer, sharing their experience of what works, and what doesn’t, and keeping support relevant, trusted and current. 

For small organisations, the platform levels the playing field. As one heritage centre manager explained: "It's like a game changer for smaller organisations... people who don't have access to these wide sort of fonts of knowledge. It's like a virtual marketing team." Volunteer-run sites can now access the same calibre of marketing support traditionally available only to larger institutions. 

For solo marketing officers, Goose provides the collaborative sounding board they often lack. "Because I work as a solo marketing officer... there's a lot of challenges you know I get given tasks and there's not always anyone I can bounce those ideas off," shared one co-designer. The platform offers that missing thinking partner, available 24/7 for idea sharing and strategy development. 

The broader sector benefits through shared learning. As more heritage professionals use Goose and contribute their experiences, the platform's knowledge base grows stronger. Successful strategies from one organisation can inform approaches elsewhere, creating a dynamic ecosystem of sector expertise that improves continuously. 

This represents more than efficiency gains. It's about building sector resilience and supporting digital transformation. It ensures heritage organisations can harness these powerful tools rather than being left behind. 

We're launching Goose in Beta this autumn, with full release planned for January 2026. The co-design process continues, ensuring the platform evolves with the sector's needs. As our testing has shown, when AI is built by heritage professionals for heritage professionals, the results speak for themselves: "next time I have a question I'll go to Goose." 

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Heritage organisations interested in joining our Beta testing programme can express their interest by emailing carol@a-m-a.co.uk. We're particularly keen to hear from organisations of all sizes who want to share their knowledge and also shape how AI can best serve the heritage sector's unique needs. 

Goose is being developed by Arts Marketing Association (AMA) through funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and co-created with the heritage sector. AMA is working with digital development agency Make Sense of It and AI partner Jo Burnham, AI for Culture.  

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