Hamar Kulturhus, the main cultural hub of Hamar, has fully embraced Yesplan. Even their Marketing Department started exploring the event planning software. “I aspire to have all our information in one place. I want to come to work, open just Yesplan and start my day,” says Katrine Clausen Fredheim, the venue’s Event Coordinator.
In the middle of Norway lies the idyllic town of Hamar, which, with only 30,000 inhabitants might seem relatively small. However, you wouldn’t say so looking at its cultural centre. The venue is spread out over 15,000 square metres and can host up to 2800 people at once.
Since 2014 Hamar Kulturhus has provided the local region with a diverse range of cultural activities such as concerts, theatre and dance performances. Additionally, the venue owns a small art gallery and is the home of the local library and an educational centre for music and art.
While guiding us, Katrine tells us about their previous planning system and the challenges faced as the venue became bigger and more complex.
“We started looking for new event planning software and discussing potential solutions with other Norwegian venues, which recommended Yesplan. We quickly learned about the value it can bring and were convinced to try it for ourselves.”
According to Katrine, Yesplan is a very intuitive tool and perfect for a venue that organises a lot of different activities like Hamar Kulturhus.
“The new system is much easier to use than our previous one. The library, the cultural school and the local theatre group love working with Yesplan. The easier the system is, the more people will start using it.” Katrine tells us.
In the beginning, the external organisations (such as the library and local theatre company) had limited permission access in Yesplan.
“After using the system for a while, they came to me asking to learn more about Yesplan and now they’re planning a complete festival on their own.
The festival is quite complex, as it spans several days, with nearly 50 performances, some acts playing twice in different rooms. It’s a challenging but exciting endeavour!"
Besides external organisations vigorously using Yesplan, Hamar Kulturhus’ Marketing Department has also found value in the event planning tool.
“Our Marketing Team started exploring how to use Yesplan for their workflow. We will continue to add elements of their process in Yesplan.
The bigger picture is to onboard all the other departments and remove any unnecessary Excel Sheets or other sources of information by bringing them in one place - Yesplan.
That’s why we also would love to start using the Excel Add-In in the near future. I aspire to have all our information in one place” Katrine adds.
*Picture of the venue by © Mads Frederik Christensen
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