Assess need and readiness for planning:

-- Gather cultural and civic leaders to discuss the cultural planning concept, methods, costs, benefits, and feasibility.
-- Clarify reasons for planning.
-- Evaluate potential for funding the planning and the administrative capacity of the agency (often a local arts agency) responsible to manage the planning.
-- Contact municipal or county planning agency and other public or private entities doing community assessment or planning. Get organized:
-- Identify and recruit community leaders to serve on steering committee.
-- Secure authorization from elected officials for planning.
-- Mayor (or equivalent) appoints planning steering committee.
-- Raise planning funds (may be done earlier in the process).
-- If needed, issue request for proposals (RFP) for consultants, contract with consultant.
-- Develop detailed work plan.

-- Consultants and/or volunteers identify information needs and sources, collect existing information (census reports, school data, recreation or historic preservation studies, economic development reports, social service studies, other plans, etc.).
-- Collect new information with interviews, focus groups, public meetings, surveys (mail or phone to targeted constituents, (e.g., artists or arts leaders, and/or representative-sample polling of population), and, if needed, specialized studies (e.g., economic impact, market research, folklife study, assessment of cultural organizations, etc.).
-- Analyze information with qualitative and quantitative analysis.
-- Quantitative: Analyze numeric data (survey results) with counts, averages, identification of patterns and clusters of data; note most frequent responses; cross tabulate (e.g., compare non-attenders' media habits with arts-attenders); do tests to determine statistical significance of results (some apparent survey results are merely the workings of chance).
-- Qualitative: Identify patterns and themes in transcripts of interviews, focus groups, and public meetings and in narrative responses to open-ended survey questions. Similar statements can be coded and then counted (e.g., "80% of those interviewed mentioned the library as a key cultural resource.").
-- Identify a few key issues for planning in an interim assessment report.

-- Organize a task force for each key issue to generate and evaluate alternative solutions, then express intentions as goals and objectives.
-- Alternatively, consultants make recommendations.
-- Convene public hearings to review draft plan.
-- Circulate draft plan to opinion leaders and assessment interviewees.
-- Steering committee negotiates and refines final goals.
-- Identify key responsibilities, time lines, and funding or (more often) leave implementation up to individual initiative.
-- Write final plan (often a summary version for wide distribution and a more detailed plan for policy-makers and cultural leaders).
-- Steering committee formally votes to approve the plan and then disbands.
-- Design, publish, and distribute the plan.

-- Present the cultural plan for adoption by municipal or county government, school board, planning commission, affected cultural institutions.
-- Raise funds to implement plans (may be done concurrently with planning).
-- Issue press release and celebrate the plan's publication.
-- Present the plan to civic and cultural organizations affected by the plan and encourage each agency to make their own plans to participate in implementation