Introduction to grassroots touring, export readiness, and determining whether an artist is prepared to develop a live career beyond their home market.

Outcome. Judge honestly whether you are ready to tour, and whether you are ready to tour abroad, before spending money on either.

Live performance is where most working artists earn most of their income, which is why touring is treated here as a business to be built rather than a series of gigs to be taken.

Grassroots touring means starting from where you actually are. Hub and Spokes plays the markets within a manageable drive of your home city, building a regional audience while keeping travel costs and logistics small enough to survive a bad night. Slow Touring is what follows: extending outward deliberately, returning often enough that each visit builds on the last.

Export readiness is a separate question and a later one. It is a checklist, not a feeling: is there evidence of demand in the territory, are your rights and administration in place there, is there someone on the ground, and can the run pay for itself or is it deliberately funded as an investment?

The mistake this module exists to prevent is the long expensive run through cities that have never heard of you, playing to twelve people a night, and coming home with debt and no audience.

What you will produce

A written readiness assessment for your home region and for one international territory, with the evidence behind each answer.