The VoxOffice Venues Design Foundations project is an initiative to develop a unique machine-learning and AI enabled marketplace that connects choir events and venues. The project extends Choirfarm's VoxOffice events ticketing and platform, and aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of the needs and challenges of both choir events managers and venue operators. Each year in the UK, over 40,000 choirs, ranging from small community groups to large professional ensembles, put on a diverse schedule of events, including rehearsals, workshops, open mic nights, sing-alongs, end-of-term concerts, festivals and singing holidays. An estimated 100,000 events per year entertain over 7 million audience members and deliver to over 2 million active choir singers diverse and uplifting personal singing experiences. The global market for choir events is calculated to be over $5B across all event and venue types. Despite this significant output from this niche segment, there are no dedicated tools for choir event planners who often struggle with limited visibility of suitable venues for their planned events which lack the required transparency of facilities or processes involved. Conversely, many smaller venues face economic challenges, with significant gaps in their calendars and where promoters struggle with event viability of grass roots artists. Many of these venue operators also lack awareness of the potential predictability, sustainability and growth opportunities presented by the diverse choir ecosystem, if a system could be devised to help both sides of the supply and demand equation. Choirfarm Ltd and Conveenie Ltd, supported by Live Music Industry Venues & Entertainment (LIVE) propose to explore the feasibility for a choir events venue recommendation engine harnessing AI automation, machine learning, and advanced marketplace recommendation systems. The team will adopt Design Thinking methods to conduct user research, develop prototypes, and gather feedback, resulting in the design a system that will assist choir event managers in planning, finding, and booking suitable venues for their events, potentially inviting collaborations with other choirs to book larger venues and put on more ambitious events. By leveraging AI and machine learning, we aim to enhance the best practice approach to venue recommendation and selection processes, improve ticket sales probability, and develop a supporting business model that boosts productivity and more predictable revenues for both choirs and venues. Starting with insights from the London choir and venue ecosystem, the project will demonstrate a scalable system applicable across the rest of the UK, bolstering a sector currently underserved by technology.

There is widespread research that confirms the mental health benefits of both singing and communal singing, including physiological and social benefits In this Fast Start project, Choirfarm's team of digital technologists, video professionals, singing professionals and choir owners set out to increase access to the mental health benefits offered by both individual and group singing through carefully crafted digital technology, and a sustainable, scalable business model working with the existing choir economy. Our feasibility study aims to test the technical and commercial viability of a video app which can be programmed to encourage daily or weekly singing and breathing exercises, coupled with a free listings marketplace of local community choirs, sufficiently detailed to advertise both video content and courses accessible through the app, as well as supporting listings to regular in person calendar events to drive their termly recruitment and attendance at social events and performances. With a revenue share business model, and promoted by choir owners and their communities of members, Choirfarm's solution will drive further uptake in local choir memberships and related services, benefitting both the mental health sufferers and the choir economy, as it bounces back from covid.