FESTIVAL GROWTH & DEVELOPMENT
An expert audit and A-Z action plan to help your festival grow, scale and succeed.
OVERVIEW
You're too close to your festival to see it clearly — and too busy running it to step back.
Our Festival Growth Playbook gives you a full spectrum, expert-level evaluation of your entire festival operation — from branding to budgeting, programming to ticketing, PR to production.
We identify the gaps, constraints, and missed opportunities holding your festival back from being what you know it can be — a market leader.
That's where we come in.
DELIVERABLES
Achieve your festival goals, increase efficiencies, boost revenue, growth and profitability.
Pre-Festival
- Interviews (founders, producers, stakeholders)
On-Site
- Diagnostic (A-Z audit / evaluation)
Post-Festival
- Presentation (findings and next steps)
- Top 10 Strategy Recommendations (short / long-term)
- Tactical Improvements (pre-fest / on-site / post-fest)
Optional
- Growth & Development Strategy (dept-by-dept)
OUTCOMES
CLARITY
See what's working, what's not, and what to fix next.
GROWTH
Identify revenue and audience expansion opportunities.
EFFICIENCY
Reduce waste, risk, and recurring headaches.
CONFIDENCE
Get third-party validation, perspective, and next steps.
JK MCKNIGHT
Your point of contact — and the experience leader behind AOI.
JK McKnight has spent 25 years in festival development. He founded Forecastle Festival, growing it from 50 people into a 75,000-person destination event and one of America's most critically acclaimed festivals. He later worked with AC Entertainment (Bonnaroo, Big Ears, High Water, Railbird and more). Today, he helps founders design, produce, and grow world-class festivals through proven strategy, specialized expertise, and decades of firsthand experience.
Read JK's full bioFrequently Asked Questions
It’s designed for existing festivals that want an experienced outside perspective on what’s working, what isn’t, and where the greatest opportunities for improvement exist. The goal is to help you optimize your festival, increase profitability, operate more efficiently, and enhance the overall experience for patrons and participants.
Extremely. Our proprietary 176-point diagnostic evaluates the festival from end to end, giving us a comprehensive view of the operation without losing sight of the details that can make a meaningful difference.
The Diagnostic outlines what we see, where optimization opportunities exist, and provides short-, mid- and long-term recommendations. The optional Growth & Development Strategy takes this a step further, translating those findings into a detailed, department-by-department roadmap.
We distill our findings into a focused set of Top 10 strategic recommendations, organized around the opportunities we believe can make the greatest difference to your festival in the short and long term.
Take your festival to the next stage
Schedule a free discovery call with our team. We’ll assess where you are, where you want to go, and exactly how we can help you get there.