03 · About
Back Room Strategies is a civic strategy practice in Colorado Springs.
Senior-led. The principal is the practitioner. The practice exists to help organizations and civic actors think clearly about what they’re for, where they’re going, and how to get there.
01 · About Seth
Seth Palmer Harris has spent twenty years on Colorado’s Front Range. Most recently Director of Development at Visionbox in Denver; before that, Meow Wolf Denver — where he was part of the workplace organizing campaign — and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
For eight years, he has been a scenario actor and training coach for high-stakes interpersonal work — Crisis Intervention Team training for law enforcement and fire departments, family-interview training for social workers entering child welfare, de-escalation training for customer service workers and utility linemen. Different audiences, the same underlying discipline.
He has held multiple board roles in arts and civic organizations across the region.
02 · About the firm
BRS is based in Colorado Springs. Peer civic-strategy practices cluster in NYC, DC, San Francisco, and Los Angeles; the Front Range has effectively none. Place-rootedness is itself the differentiation. The work happens inside the working relationships built over twenty years on the Front Range — civic leaders, planning staff, organizers, people who have served in government. That is what place-rootedness actually means: knowing how decisions move in this region, who carries them, where leverage sits.
The practice is intentionally small — one principal, project-based collaborators when an engagement calls for them. That small size is the point. It keeps the senior practitioner on every engagement, keeps the calendar honest, and keeps the firm focused on the kind of work it does best.
The intellectual position sits in a particular tradition — Harry Boyte’s civic-agency framework, Paulo Freire’s problem-posing pedagogy, Grace Lee Boggs and adrienne maree brown on emergence and movement work, Elinor Ostrom on the governance of commons. The work draws on that thinking the way any practice draws on its sources: not as doctrine, but as the shape of attention it brings to a question.
03 · Related ventures
Three projects sit beside the practice, each on its own clock:
- Palmer Institute— a small civic education center opening in Colorado Springs in 2026. Workshops, seminars, multi-week courses, and the Institute’s own immersive learning format, plus group and custom programs for organizations.
- The Back Room Social Club— opening in Colorado Springs in 2026. Evenings of conversation, debate, and the kinds of gatherings that need their own room.
- Project Flânerie— a small studio of apps about how we direct our attention, and to what. Field guides for the world right in front of you.
04 · On the name
The back room is where consequential conversations actually happen, where decisions get worked out before they get announced. It’s also a room that takes craft and care to host well — knowing who should be in it, what question it’s there for, how to keep it productive.
The firm exists to be that kind of room for the organizations and civic actors it works with.
The back room is where consequential conversations actually happen.On the name
Start a conversation
Email seth@backroomstrategies.com. A short message about what you’re working on gets a reply in a few days.