Cultural strategy by Shona Neary
Shona Neary connects business and technology to real people and places through Countercult Studios, working with agency partners and direct clients in technology, hospitality, government, and place development.
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What Shona helps clients do
Her work starts with a business goal, technology question, or place, then connects it to the people, relationships, and conditions that make the next step real.
- Cultural strategy and intelligence: understand the people, spaces, signals, and relationships shaping a market.
- Cultural archiving: document local people, stories, traditions, spaces, creative practices, and living heritage with the community rather than around it.
- Place development: turn local cultural knowledge into useful direction for funding, programming, partnerships, tourism, and long-term identity.
- Creative direction: turn cultural insight into a clear narrative, concept, campaign, or experience.
- Market entry and relocation: help organizations, visitors, and potential residents understand a place through local context rather than generic promotion.
- Experiential strategy: develop activations, partnerships, and real-world tests that make sense in the place where they happen.
- Tourism and government: shape artist-led destination programs, cultural mapping, public strategy, funding narratives, and community partnerships.
- Creative × tech: connect founders, product teams, artists, and cultural workers around AI, technology, and human behavior.
Strategy built from practice
Shona combines twelve years of creative and brand experience with the day-to-day work of building Countercult, making art as Sketchy Shona, producing artist residencies, and running The Floor in Berlin. That proximity to independent culture keeps the strategy grounded in real people and places.
Countercult Studios can support an early question, a focused strategy sprint, local research, creative direction, partner curation, or delivery of a larger activation. The scope is shaped around the brief rather than forced into a fixed package.
For experiential, creative, destination, and brand agencies, Countercult can work before the brief is fixed, alongside the core team, or behind the scenes as a specialist cultural partner. Read the agency partner brief →
Rural cultural archiving and destination development
Small towns, villages, and rural regions often have deep cultural knowledge but limited ways to document it, make it discoverable, or connect it to funded development. Countercult Studios can help identify the people, stories, practices, gathering places, landscapes, and creative work that make a place distinct.
That archive can become more than a record. With local participation, it can inform artist residencies, cultural routes, events, visitor experiences, funding applications, local partnerships, and a clearer invitation for people considering a visit or a longer-term move. The aim is to build attention around the people already shaping the place-not replace them with a generic destination brand.
Read the rural cultural archiving and place development brief →
Selected Countercult Studios work
- Quouch: strategy, creative direction, and an audience-tested connection pilot
- Zalando Pride: community-led participation in Berlin
- Most Wanted: Music: cultural placement in Berlin’s music ecosystem
- Trackside Studios, Soweto: artist space exchange in development
- Avomind: a more human employer-brand experience
- Berlin Corner Shops: real-world cultural research and activation
- Anceu, Spain: cultural archiving in a 97-person village
- Artist residencies as cultural-tourism infrastructure
Who the work is for
Shona works with rural communities, small towns, destination and tourism organizations, local governments, cultural institutions, values-aligned brands, experiential agencies, and VC-backed teams. The work can begin anywhere a place needs cultural archiving, a stronger public story, useful visitor attention, or a locally grounded strategy for attracting people and investment.
Common questions
Does Shona work with rural areas and small towns?
Yes. Rural communities, villages, and small towns are a core fit for cultural archiving, place development, artist-led tourism, and locally grounded destination strategy.
What can cultural archiving include?
People, stories, oral histories, traditions, independent businesses, creative practices, gathering spaces, events, landscapes, and the relationships that make a place culturally specific.
Can this support tourism or people moving to a place?
Yes. The work can shape cultural routes, residencies, events, digital discovery, visitor experiences, and an honest place narrative for people considering a visit, collaboration, investment, or longer-term relocation.
Bring the brief-or the question before the brief.
Book a free call to discuss cultural strategy, creative direction, or a Countercult Studios project.
Countercult Studios is led by Shona Neary. The work spans cultural strategy, cultural archiving, place development, creative direction, production, curation, audience testing, and real-world activation.
This piece was informed by Shona Neary’s writing, conversations, and thinking around independent culture, artists, and place.
editorial process: Our Journals are pulled from our writings over the years to get information out as quickly and as widely as possible, and to get to what matters: finding each other and claiming our seat in the circular economy. Some ideas overlap between Shona Neary's work on cultural infrastructure and their artist practice as Sketchy Shona. AI is a tool for infrastructure, not for creating Journal writing or artists' work. We welcome original reporting and pitches from journalists and independent publishers.