From Posters in a Cupboard to a Living Archive

If you run a venue, you probably have at least three different "archives":

Posters in a cupboard
PDFs on someone's laptop
A website that only shows the current season (if that)

When a funder, journalist or new programmer asks:

"What have you produced in the last five years?"
"Who's worked here recently?"
"Have you hosted much new writing / youth work / dance / live music?"

…you pull information from memory, old brochures and half-remembered emails.

Parts Known exists to fix that.

It's not just for performers. It's also a way for venues to turn their history into a living, searchable archive that actually helps with programming, fundraising and community.

The problem: venue history gets lost in people's heads

In most venues:

Staff change, and take their institutional memory with them
Old programmes live in boxes or clouds nobody can access
Your website only shows the current or last season
New colleagues don't know who your regular collaborators are

That makes things harder than they need to be:

You repeat mistakes because nobody can see what you tried before
You lose touch with artists and companies who were great to work with
Proposals from artists and producers are harder to evaluate without context

The building remembers that work happened. The internet doesn't.

A venue page as your public memory

On Parts Known, a venue is more than just a name and an address. It's a place with spaces, events and relationships.

Your venue page can show:

Basic info

Name, address, website, contact
Short description and programming focus
Accessibility information

Spaces

Main house, studio, black box, rehearsal rooms, outdoor spaces
Capacity, stage dimensions, seating layout
Basic tech specs (lighting, sound, projection)

Events and productions

Past and current shows, concerts, festivals and residencies
Linked to the companies and artists involved
Linked to the works (plays, musicals, pieces) performed

Photos and press

Production stills, auditorium images
Press quotes and reviews mentioning the venue or its seasons

Over time, this becomes a public history of what happens in your building, without you needing a developer every time you want to add a past show.

You can even link or embed this into your own website, so "What's been on" is always up to date.

Remembering who's worked with you

One of the most valuable things you have as a venue is your network of collaborators:

Companies who've staged shows with you
Artists who've appeared in your seasons
Designers, technicians and creatives who know your spaces well

Parts Known connects your venue to:

The productions and events you've hosted
The groups and companies who brought them in
The people (performers, creatives, crew) involved in those shows

That means you can answer questions like:

"Who directed that brilliant youth show we had two years ago?"
"Which lighting designer really understood our studio space?"
"Which companies have we supported more than once?"

New staff can see the history at a glance, instead of relying on whoever's been around longest.

Helping artists and producers find the right space

Venues are more than just dates in a calendar; they're specific capacities, floor plans and capabilities.

On Parts Known, your venue page can help people understand:

How many people your spaces seat
What kind of work you're set up to support (dance, amplified music, text-based theatre, cabaret, youth shows, etc.)
What equipment you have in-house, and what can be hired

That makes conversations with artists easier:

"We want to tour a small-cast show with a simple LX plot and no band."
"We're bringing a youth musical with a big cast and playback."
"We have a jazz band and we'd like to record a live album."

They can get a sense of whether your venue fits, before the long email chain.

Why use Parts Known instead of just your own website?

Your website is for selling tickets now.

Parts Known is for remembering and using your history.

Your own site usually only shows the current or last season.
Parts Known accumulates all the productions, events and collaborators attached to your venue.
That history is searchable and cross-linked to people, groups and works across the whole platform.

You can still:

Link from your website's "About / History" page to your Parts Known archive
Use it internally as a quick reference for programming, development and marketing

And because the platform is built for the whole performing-arts ecosystem, your venue history isn't floating on its own—it's part of the bigger picture.

What does it cost?

Core tools for venues are free:

Create a venue page
List your spaces with basic specs
Add past and current events
Connect to companies, artists and works

Venue Pro (which Founding Venues get free for a year) adds:

Pretty URLs
Multiple admins for your team
Equipment rental tools where relevant

We're committed to keeping Pro as low-cost as possible. The platform should fit real performing-arts budgets, not landlord them.

Founding Venues: free Pro for a year

During early access, we're offering:

Free Venue Pro for 12 months for the first 100 venues that:

Create a venue page
Add at least one space or event

Founding Venues get:

A Founding Venue badge on their page
A year to build out their archive and try the tools
A locked-in low Pro price afterwards if they decide to keep it

If you're a theatre, music venue, studio or arts centre that believes your history is worth more than a stack of programmes in the office, we'd love you in that first 100.