What does it mean to be a community of cultural institutions sharing the same website partner?
On the surface, it might sound straightforward: a group of cultural institutions using the same platform, sharing ideas, and meeting occasionally. But for those inside it—venues, directors, marketing teams, box office managers, and our own developers—it creates something far more profound.
It’s a living network where one venue’s challenge becomes another’s breakthrough. Where ideas travel faster because trust is easier to build amongst like-minded organisations. Where technology evolves not in isolation, but within the very sector it serves, shaped by the people who live its challenges every day.
As CultureSuite celebrates 25 years of serving arts and culture, we’re not just marking a milestone. We’re celebrating a way of working – a community-led approach to innovation that’s redefining the way the sector invests in digital technology.
To understand how this works in practice, we spoke to one of our longest-standing advocates: Ruben Israël, Deputy Director of Theatre De Maagd, whose career has been intertwined with our platform for over two decades.
Innovation in the cultural sector: why it’s different
In many industries, technology providers design products in closed environments, guided by market forecasts, competitive pressure, and substantial financial incentives. They have dedicated R&D budgets, investor backing, and the freedom to experiment widely, knowing that successful innovations can generate significant financial returns. In these contexts, keeping up with technological trends is both a strategic priority and an economic imperative.
The cultural sector operates under entirely different dynamics. Here, innovation is rarely motivated by financial wins. Budgets are tight, funding comes from grants, public support, or philanthropy, and surpluses—if they exist—are quickly reinvested into programming or community initiatives. Teams are small, and digital expertise is often stretched thin or folded into hybrid roles. The ambition to innovate is strong, but the resources are limited.
In this environment, progress depends on trust, shared knowledge, and the pooling of resources, making community-driven innovation not just beneficial but essential to sustainable growth. CultureSuite embraced this necessity and made it the foundation of building a community. As Coen van der Poll, CEO of CultureSuite, puts it: “The beauty is that there’s real freedom to find improvements together: solutions aren’t imposed; they grow from shared insight.”
Consider how venue-specific challenges have driven platform-wide improvements. A small theatre's need for better donor integration led to CRM enhancements that now serve major venues. A mid-sized venue's request for more flexible programming tools evolved into features that have transformed how cultural institutions manage complex seasons. This is what 25 years of shared knowledge has built: a platform shaped as much by its users as our developers.
Growing together with Theatre De Maagd
It’s why, when we talk about “community,” we’re not talking about a list of clients. We mean a network that thinks, experiments, and learns together. At CultureSuite, building technology starts with building relationships.
The most valuable innovations we’ve developed didn’t start in our offices. They began as questions, frustrations, and flashes of inspiration from the people running venues day-to-day, who then reached out to our team. Sometimes it’s a practical challenge sent our way, other times a bold “‘what if?’ from someone eager to experiment.
Few people embody this journey better than Ruben. He’s been part of the CultureSuite community for 21 years, through multiple venues, roles, and waves of change in the cultural sector. His career has been a constant dialogue between cultural vision and technical possibility, bringing six theatres into the CultureSuite community, testing bold ideas first-hand, and proving time and again that innovation in culture is both possible and powerful.
“CultureSuite has become the gold standard for cultural websites,” Ruben says. “From integration capabilities to ticketing systems, it offers a complete solution built over 25 years of understanding what venues, and their audiences, really need. There’s no need to start from scratch; it’s about identifying your requirements and collaborating with a skilful team who understand the sector.”
No seats for boring ideas
When Ruben first began experimenting with our platform, he wasn’t afraid to push them in directions nobody had tried before. Not every idea was a breakthrough, some were simply playful detours, but all were worth exploring.
Sometimes that meant borrowing tried-and-tested concepts from outside the cultural sector, like cinema subscriptions or gym memberships, and reshaping them for his local audience. Other times, it meant inventing something entirely new. Whatever the approach, his ideas were always rooted in the habits, interests, and rhythms of the people sitting in the seats.
In 2006, Ruben worked with our team to launch “Theatre Dating,” a feature that connected audience members based on their performance preferences. At the time, online dating was only just beginning to lose its stigma, but together we saw an opportunity grounded in real data: a quarter of households were single, and nobody likes going to performances alone. “When two people both get excited about experimental dance,” Ruben says with a grin, “they’ve already found common ground.”
Two years later, our collaboration took another leap into uncharted territory. We joined forces to create real-time performance feedback from audiences via SMS displays in the theatre café. “Some performers were literally hiding from the café,” Ruben remembers. “The feedback was a bit too real.”
In that same year, we also developed an algorithmic recommendation engine that analysed visitor preferences to suggest performances. What feels standard now was groundbreaking in 2008.
Other projects combined strategic thinking with a dash of mischief. While Ruben was at the Rotterdamse Schouwburg (now called Theater Rotterdam), we worked together to introduce the “Unlimited Small Theatre Card” for €125, giving audiences access to all small productions. It worked much like a gym membership. Everyone signed up in January, and the theatres enjoyed a steady flow of attendance throughout the year, often from audiences trying shows they might never have considered before.
And then there was the legendary “Sirene Sale,” perfectly timed with the monthly emergency siren tests in the Netherlands. Every first Monday at noon, his team coordinated flash sales for mystery show tickets at deep discounts. “It was like coordinating a high-tech heist,” Ruben laughs. “Except completely legal and with more shows.”
Real innovation comes from knowing who’s in the seats
But don’t let the playful experiments fool you. Ruben knows exactly what makes theatres tick – the patrons who walk through the doors every night. Over the years, he has seen firsthand how CultureSuite’s 25-year evolution has supported that understanding, giving him the tools to turn audience insight into strategic action.
It’s for this reason that, over the course of his career, Ruben has brought six venues into the CultureSuite community. Each time, he’s arrived with the same instinctive questions pointed towards our team: How can we grow from here? What can we do with this?
“Ruben does interesting things with our modules,” says Coen. “It’s especially beautiful when he uses them in ways we never originally intended. It shows just how much versatility and potential is built into the platform. He was also involved early on in our first steps with data research, and we still draw on insights from that work to develop the platform today.”
Ruben now works at a regional theatre in West-Brabant called De Maagd, also part of our community. Ruben explains, “we’re not trying to be an avant-garde powerhouse. We’re a mid-sized theatre that knows exactly who we are and who we serve. Most marketers want to target everyone, shooting with scattered pellets. That’s idealistic thinking. The key is knowing your audience, and when you do, you can innovate in ways that matter to them.”
The long-term partnerships continue
As CultureSuite enters its next quarter-century, Ruben’s mind is already on the future. He’s eager to sit down with our team to explore new possibilities in automation and personalisation. “We need to be one step ahead of our visitors,” he says. “I’d like to use data to predict what they’ll enjoy before they know it themselves. All the pieces are there on the platform. Now it’s about bringing them together in new ways.”
While our team celebrates the anniversary, collaborations with long-standing community members like Ruben are a reminder of what truly drives our work. As Coen reflects, “What we’ve learned over 25 years is that innovation in the cultural sector isn’t just about building better technology, it’s about building better communities.”
It’s this long-term perspective that makes the difference. When venues know their ideas will be heard, respected, and developed with care, they have the confidence to share bold visions and to take part in experimental approaches, opening the door to innovations that would be unthinkable in shorter-term relationships.
Let’s innovate together
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