In the community and culture sector, we talk about experience all the time.

Audience experience.
Visitor experience.
Patron experience.

We usually mean it in a practical way: Did everything work? Was the event smooth? Did people get what they came for?

But that definition is thinner than it needs to be — and it misses why some experiences linger while others fade, even when nothing “went wrong.”

A more useful way to think about experience is this:

Experience is not a single interaction. It’s a relationship, shaped by context, memory, and expectation.

Experience doesn’t happen in isolation

People don’t arrive at a concert, exhibition, or community event as blank slates.

They arrive carrying:

• past experiences with your organization and community
• expectations shaped by marketing, word of mouth, or reputation
• emotional context from their day, their life, their relationship to the place

All of that colours how the experience is perceived — often more than the execution itself.

This is why two people can attend the same event and walk away with completely different impressions.

The experience isn’t just what happened. It’s how what happened landed, in context.

Memory is selective — and unfair

One of the most important (and uncomfortable) truths about experience is that we don’t remember it evenly.

Research consistently shows that peak moments and endings disproportionately shape how an experience is remembered.

Not the average. Not the effort. Not the number of things that went right.

This matters deeply in cultural work.

A show can be beautifully programmed, well-run, and thoughtfully marketed — and still be remembered primarily for:

• a frustrating ticketing moment
• a confusing arrival
• an awkward interaction at the door
• or a flat ending that dissipates energy instead of gathering it

That doesn’t mean people are ungrateful.
It means memory is human.

Why goodwill feels so fragile in small organizations

There’s another dynamic at play that many volunteer-led and resource-stretched organizations feel intuitively, even if they don’t name it.

Negative experiences carry more weight than positive ones.

It often takes multiple good interactions to offset a single bad one in how people feel about an organization or a person. This isn’t a failure of service — it’s a feature of human psychology.

In practice, this means:

• one dismissive email can undo months of warm communication
• one confusing process can overshadow many thoughtful gestures
• one moment of friction can become the story people tell themselves later

Understanding this isn’t about blame.
It’s about realism.

Meeting expectations isn’t what people remember

Most organizations put a lot of energy into getting the basics right — and rightly so.

Things like:

• functionality
• reliability
• usability
• aesthetics

These are essential. When they’re missing, people are dissatisfied.

But when they’re present, they’re largely invisible.

People don’t walk away saying, “The ticketing system functioned correctly.”
They assume it should.

What people do remember are moments that create emotional resonance:

• feeling seen
• feeling welcomed
• feeling engaged
• feeling that something mattered

Those moments don’t come from systems alone. They come from relationships.

This is especially true in community and cultural work

Arts and community organizations often feel pressure to behave like brands or abstract institutions — to sound polished, consistent, and professional at all costs.

But empathy doesn’t attach to abstractions.
It attaches to people.

Audiences don’t build emotional relationships with “the organization.”
They build them with:

• artists
• volunteers
• front-of-house staff
• hosts
• recognizable human presence

This is not a weakness of small or volunteer-led organizations.
It’s one of their greatest strengths — when it’s designed for, rather than smoothed over.

A quiet reframe

If experience is a relationship, then improving experience isn’t just about fixing problems or optimizing processes.

It’s about:

• understanding context
• being intentional about moments that carry emotional weight
• recognizing that memory and expectation are always in the room
• designing for human connection, not just operational success

That doesn’t require perfection.
It requires attention.

And it starts by letting go of the idea that experience is something that happens for people — and recognizing that it’s something built with them, over time.

This post is informed by ideas from The Umami Strategy by Aga Szostek, which explores how experience, emotion, and memory shape our relationships with systems and organizations.