The Alnwick Garden

The Alnwick Garden

The Alnwick Garden engaged with the programme as a cross-functional team, with staff from leadership, creative delivery and commercial roles attending the masterclass. This was later followed by a dedicated session with a wider group of senior colleagues from across the organisation, including representatives from operations, IT, communications, finance and other key areas.

This makes The Alnwick Garden one of the clearest examples in the programme of an organisation exploring AI not simply as a set of tools for isolated tasks, but as a broader strategic opportunity that could shape how different teams work, innovate and collaborate in future.

At the outset, there was already clear curiosity about AI across the organisation, but confidence, familiarity and day-to-day use varied by role. Some team members were already thinking about AI in relation to strategy and innovation, while others were more focused on immediate operational or creative applications. There were also different perceptions of AI across the team: for some, it represented exciting potential; for others, it raised more caution around quality, creativity, trust and appropriateness. This is a common starting point in larger organisations, where the opportunity is real but the baseline is uneven and different departments see different possibilities and risks.

The challenge, therefore, was not whether AI might be useful, but how to approach it in a way that balanced innovation, efficiency and responsible use. There was a clear need to think simultaneously about opportunity and governance: how AI could support planning, creativity, communications, sales and internal processes, while also protecting quality, judgement and brand integrity. A particularly important part of the discussion was how AI adoption should align with the organisation's wider values and public-facing identity. This meant not only asking which tasks AI could help with, but also which uses felt appropriate, where human input should remain central, and how to judge whether particular AI tools were a good fit for the organisation in practice.

Support unfolded in two stages. First, the masterclass helped participating team members identify a wide range of potential use cases across the organisation, from strategic planning and event development to marketing workflows, creative production, reporting and sales-related tasks. This created an early map of opportunities and highlighted that AI could be relevant across several departments, not only in one specialist function.

The second stage was a wider leadership discussion session focused on organisational readiness. This explored where AI might improve efficiency, how responsible use could be supported across teams, and what kind of culture would be needed to encourage experimentation without compromising oversight, originality or accountability. An important part of that conversation was recognising that responsible leadership in AI adoption is not only about writing policy. It is also about creating space for different colleagues to voice their hopes, concerns and boundaries, and then using those perspectives to shape a thoughtful organisational approach. In this sense, the discussion was as much about culture and values as it was about technology. Since then, two specific pilot areas have begun to emerge as early priorities: using AI to support the development of the organisation's annual Social Impact Report, and exploring its use in Visitor Sales Analysis. These are helpful starting points because they sit in areas where AI could improve the handling, structuring and interpretation of complex information, while still allowing for human oversight and judgement.

The impact so far is best understood as a shift in mindset, ambition and readiness. The organisation is now considering AI not only as a tactical support tool, but as an area where it has the potential to be forward-looking within the sector. There is clearer recognition that AI could support a range of functions, including sales workflows, campaign planning, event and programme development, reporting, cross-team efficiency and strategic thinking. Just as importantly, there is an equally clear understanding that progress needs to be underpinned by responsible use, clear boundaries and leadership attention.

This case stands out because of the speed with which AI moved from workshop discussion into a broader organisational conversation. Rather than remaining with a few interested individuals, it quickly became a topic for senior-level reflection across departments. That is an important marker of traction, particularly in a well-established organisation where change needs to be both ambitious and carefully handled.