One of the main driving forces for the Proscenium project has come from working on websites for performing arts companies which are heavily influenced by structural and aesthetic considerations (i.e. the 'look' of the finished website) and less concerned about the content and publishing model of the final product. Performing arts and similar cultural organisations are content rich and usually have an abundance of material which can be harvested and published as part of their online communications but it can be easy for these website projects to sacrifice this potential for great content by directing web projects based on the visual outcome alone. I'm not discounting the value of great graphic design here, I just think that the process for developing these websites needs to have a balanced approach which begins with content and functionality and then develops a visual outcome once the main publishing model has been created.
This distribution aims to create a flexible publishing model tailored for performing arts organisations straight out of the box, so that a website can be developed from a content-first approach without large up-front costs. Once that solution has been developed a visual look for the website can be created that is informed by the content that the organisation will be publishing. For companies interested in pursuing more sophisticated features or innovative solutions there would be a flexible base to use as a foundation.
Another key factor which has prompted this project is the difficulty for performing arts companies to source money for their online communications. When online projects are commenced there is a lot of value being used in re-inventing the same features which are used across nearly every performing arts company website. Features like a performance calendar, production information, box-office details, workshop and education programs. If there was a ready made Drupal distribution that contained these kind of features and was tailored specifically for the perfoming-arts I think smaller community based organisations would gain value and have more resources to engage audiences.
At the moment the distribution is just some Drush make files and a rather basic installation profile on my local dev box but hopefully an initial proof-of-concept version will be ready to share soon.