Podcast Recap – The business side of building a performing arts studio
Here at Wirebox, we recently welcomed Amy Lazzerini, Co-Principal of The Dan Tien Performing Arts Studios, to discuss business growth, community, technology and more. Based at Harebreaks Community Hub in North Watford, The Dan Tien provides dance, drama, musical theatre, singing and music tuition under one roof.
What began with a trolley full of equipment and classes held in hired community halls, has grown into a thriving performing arts school with around 500 students and over a dozen teachers. During our conversation, Amy shared the decisions, values and lessons that have shaped that journey.
The value of commercial thinking
Today, she estimates that her working week is divided roughly 60% towards running the organisation and 40% towards teaching. That combination of practical teaching experience and commercial awareness has become particularly valuable as the business has grown. Like many young dance schools, The Dan Tien started by hiring space in different community centres. That meant equipment had to be packed into a car and transported between venues before every class. Moving into a permanent home changed the organisation considerably. It created space for an office, dedicated studios, music rooms and the systems required to manage a much larger operation. The Dan Tien now has two connected sides to the organisation. Its performing arts team delivers dance, drama and musical-theatre classes six days a week, while its dedicated music department operates throughout the week, with several rooms running simultaneously.
What growth means
Reaching this scale has meant accepting that founders can’t do everything themselves. Hiring teachers, delegating responsibilities and building a reliable team have all been necessary parts of the organisation’s growth. It is a familiar lesson for many founders… a business can’t continue expanding while every task remains dependent on the same two or three people. When asked what she wished she had known before starting the business, Amy offered a lesson that applies well beyond the performing arts:
“You can’t please everybody all of the time. You can’t be the right thing for everyone.”
During the earlier years of the business, Amy often found herself trying to accommodate every request – even when doing so risked moving the school away from its central values. But experience has changed that outlook. She now believes business owners need to understand what they do well, trust their approach and accept that their service will not suit every customer. The Dan Tien, for example, is not focused on entering dance competitions every weekend. Its priorities are high-quality teaching, inclusion, examinations and meaningful performance opportunities. A family searching specifically for a competition-led school may therefore be better served somewhere else (and that’s okay). Being honest about that is not a failure to win a customer. It is evidence of a business that understands its identity.
Using technology without losing personality
Managing hundreds of student records and a seven-day timetable would be extremely difficult using spreadsheets alone, so that’s why The Dan Tien uses specialist management software for scheduling, customer information and the everyday administration of its classes. This reflects a wider evolution familiar to many growing businesses… informal tools may work at the beginning, but stronger systems become essential as staff numbers, payments and operational complexity increase.
And then there’s the benefit technology brought during COVID that allowed them to survive the shutdowns and move everything online:
In the future, Amy also sees value in AI as a supportive tool. It can help someone explore an idea, overcome a creative block or organise their thinking. She has used it herself as something to ‘bounce ideas off’ while developing a show. However, she is cautious – as we all should be – about handing over her organisation’s entire brand voice to automated platforms. For a community-focused business working with children, authenticity matters, and communications should sound like the people behind the organisation. Moreover, decisions involving safeguarding, consent and young people’s images require proper human oversight. AI may help with the process, but it should not replace responsibility.
The human side of the arts
Amy also believes that technology cannot reproduce the central experience offered by a performing arts teacher. Dance and music are learned through practice, feedback, relationships and repeated mistakes. A student puts on their tap shoes, tries the movement, gets it wrong, receives guidance and tries again. Digital tools can support administration and learning, but they cannot care about a child, notice a loss of confidence or adapt a lesson to the way an individual student responds. In Amy’s words, her product is not an object or even a service – it is an experience. At the centre of that experience is a trained teacher who knows the student and genuinely wants them to succeed. It’s about the human side. That’s one of the many reasons The Dan Tien operates as a non-profit organisation that places strong emphasis on its relationships with its students, parents, other Watford and South West Hertfordshire businesses, schools and creative organisations. Dance schools can sometimes become protective of their methods and reluctant to work with perceived competitors. But her view is that sharing knowledge, skills and resources can improve the range and quality of opportunities available to local children.
