Korrine Sky · Cultural Strategist & Entertainment Executive
Cultural brand strategy, proven at commercial scale.
One discipline, applied three ways: strategy for brands and institutions, talent representation, and live culture. All of it builds the same thing, the authority that unlocks the right rooms.
14 years
In business and culture, now CEO of SMADE Group since 2025
100+
Talent bookings delivered, UK and international
Worked with
The work, applied
Different problems. The same understanding of how people move.
My work sits across artists, cultural businesses and institutions, but the question underneath it is usually the same: what will make the right people care, believe and act?
Artists
Build beyond your home market.
For artists and teams thinking about positioning, international audiences, touring, market entry and the commercial infrastructure around a growing career.
- Artist strategy
- International growth
- Audience development
- Talent representation
- Touring and bookings
Events, founders & cultural businesses
Build something people want to belong to.
For promoters, festival owners, founders and cultural businesses trying to turn an idea, audience or community into something people buy, attend, share and return to.
- Audience strategy
- Event growth
- Campaign strategy
- Positioning
- Advisory
Brands & institutions
Understand the culture before you enter it.
For brands, governments and institutions navigating audiences, markets and communities where context matters as much as reach.
- Cultural intelligence
- Audience strategy
- Diaspora engagement
- Soft power
- Creative economy
- Cultural diplomacy
The short version
I arrived in the UK as an asylum seeker, learned early that credibility is something you build in public, and turned that instinct into a craft.
Asylum seeker, teenage trader, medical student, crisis organiser, chief executive. It reads like a detour until you notice every step was about the same thing: who gets believed, and why.
2,000+ students evacuated from Ukraine in 2022, with borders still moving.
The practice
Three applications of the same idea.
Cultural brand strategy is the discipline. Talent representation and live culture are where I apply it at full commercial scale.
Most recent flagship
Timaya Day, a sold-out O2 homecoming.
20
Years of Afrobeats, staged live
Timaya
A sold-out headline show at indigo at The O2, with a full room, a surprise-filled set and the operating proof to scale Timaya's next UK campaign.
My role
Project leadership · Live production · Artist relations · Marketing · PR · Programming · Audience strategy
Recent work
More selected work.
August 2025
Rotimi
Rotimi's first Leicester show, sold out to capacity.
My rolePromotion · Booking · Artist liaison
350Tickets, sold out to capacity
2022 onwards, New York and London
United Nations
A rescue operation taken from a thread to the floor of the UN.
My roleAdvocacy · Briefing · Narrative
2,000+Students supported out of Ukraine
Ongoing, narrative and communications strategist and advisory board member
The Executive Branch
16,000+ members, one connected brand story.
My roleNarrative Strategy · Advisory · Partnerships
16,000+Community members
Live culture
Four thousand people in a field in Leicester.
Africa Music Festival 2024 · Marketing Direction · Talent · Audience Strategy
Talent
A selection of the artists I have worked with.
The thinking
I don't just work inside culture. I study it.
Essays, frameworks and a working library on authority, credibility and access.
PDF, free download
The Cultural Brand Strategy Toolkit
The working document behind the frameworks: the definition, the five principles, the glossary, the Clarity to Connection™ model and the Cultural Alignment Filter™. Free, no gate you cannot walk through.
By Korrine Sky
Culture & Commerce
The magazine.
Long-form features and learning notes on how culture turns into commerce.
Cover storyCulture & Commerce · 15 min read
Jay-Z Is Selling Us Music We Already Own
Thirty years after Reasonable Doubt, an old catalogue is generating stadium shows, physical products, exhibitions and new commercial partnerships.
Essay
We're all Africans, until an African headlines Reggae Land
On reggae, ownership, and why Black unity gets complicated the moment power enters the room.
Essay
I AM RANKED #1 — BUT HERE’S WHAT ACTUALLY GOT ME THERE
It wasn’t my strategy. It wasn’t even the work. But a realisation that took me years to see; and it happened through my own brand.
Learn
The same sequences, written down.
Playbooks and masterclasses built out of the campaigns, rooms and markets on this site.
Playbook
The market entry plan, written down.
The International Artist Playbook
The sequence I use to decide whether an artist is ready to leave their home market, which territory to enter first, and what has to be true before anyone spends money on flights, PR or a headline show.
- An artist has momentum at home and no plan abroad
- A team is about to spend on PR or touring
- A promoter is asking for proof you do not have yet
The rest of the library
Start free: the checklists in The Library, and the free Artist Legacy Audit inside the Culture & Commerce cover story.
Work with me
Bring me the problem, not the package.
Some people arrive with an artist preparing for a new market. Others have a festival that needs an audience, a campaign that is not landing, or an institution trying to understand a community properly. The first job is working out what the actual problem is. Then we decide what level of intervention it needs.
Get in touch
Tell me what you are building.
Pick the option that fits and the form asks only what is relevant.
Culture & Commerce
One letter. Culture, audience and commercial strategy.
Notes on how culture becomes audience, and how audience becomes revenue. Written for artists, teams and brands building beyond their home market.