COMMON TIME

WHAT

Common Time is an independent advisory working across live performance and entertainment in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, taking big ideas and helping them survive contact with reality.

Great venues fail without compelling activity. Strong events fail without the right places, contracts, and operating models underneath them. Public investment achieves nothing when governance, operating models, or incentives are misaligned.

The ultimate goal is to make live performance less fragile.

Common Time works across cultural infrastructure, festivals and touring, major events, governance, funding, operating models, and commercial partnerships. If the work involves artists, audiences, buildings, money, or risk, it is in scope.

HOW

Common Time provides independent, senior-level advice on live performance projects that sit between creative ambition, public accountability, and commercial reality.

• Sector policy and initiatives
• Venue strategy and operating models
• Festival and event strategy
• Business cases and investment logic
• Governance and stakeholder alignment
• Public and private partnership models
• Venue and event start-up and delivery support
• Commercial problem-solving

The work is advisory by default and delivery-capable where required.

WHO

Common Time is a project by Gus Sharp. He is often engaged where projects are complex, politically sensitive, or structurally unclear.

Over the past two decades, Gus has held senior roles across major events, destination and economic development, and community arts organisations.

His experience spans venue development and operations, major event attraction and delivery, intellectual property, and government and stakeholder relations.

Before moving into senior arts and events roles, Gus trained and worked as a solicitor.

Clients include:

• The Waikato Regional Theatre
• Live Nation
• World of WearableArt
• WellingtonNZ
• Hamilton Arts Festival Toi Ora ki Kirikiriroa