The Youth Theatre Arts Scotland aimed to develop a new digital strategy and website to better serve their membership and become a leading online resource for professionals working with youth theatre. They conducted user research, developed requirements with a consultant, selected a developer and launched a new mobile-friendly website with directories, events, news and other improved features. While the project scope expanded, they prioritized based on budget and gained valuable insights into managing such projects.

1. Add Content here

2. Our Mission
To transform lives through youth
theatre by providing inspiring
participatory opportunities for
young people and by connecting,
supporting and training the
professionals who work with them.

3. Why did we apply for the Make:IT:Happen fund?
In line with a new strategic plan, we wanted to widen our
appeal and reach by developing our digital capacity.
We wanted to make the youth theatre sector more accessible
and provide thought leadership for the individuals and
organisations working within it. A key part of this aim was to
create a more dynamic website.

4. Project Aim
YTAS aims to be the go-to organisation in Scotland, and a
leading authority in the UK and around the world, for
professionals who use drama and theatre in their work with
young people.
It is hoped that a new online presence could mirror that, with a
richer website which is easier to navigate and provides a
welcoming and informative entry point for all those with an
interest in youth theatre arts.

5. What we did
We worked with consultant Sarah Gee
to review our aspirations and outline
how the new digital resource might be
structured.
An online survey was built to ask our
membership about their potential use of
this new digital platform. Findings from
the survey were added into the project
brief presented to the web agencies who
tendered.

6. Discoveries
Current website was cluttered, not designed.
Content hidden below layers of navigation.
The new site to be ‘richer’ and constantly changing.
Pages need to support video, audio and downloads.
Create directories for membership.
New site to be tablet/mobile enabled.
More visually-appealing.
Ability to join/renew membership/donate online.
Encourage a crossover between related events,
opportunities, groups and freelancers.
Previous website:
single page for
listing freelance
members

7. What we did next
We wrote a project brief based on the consultancy document.
We put a call out for expressions of interest from web
agencies.
We received nine responses.
We invited five to tender.
All were provided with findings from the online survey.
We selected Infinite Eye as our supplier.

8. What changed along the way?
Our project aspirations grew: from an online members network
designed to deliver training and share resources (i.e. a blog,
forum and opportunities bulletin board) to a website with an
automatically changing homepage, searchable directories of
members, news and performance listings along with Amazon-style
functionality to encourage visits to related content.
We narrowed the primary audience down to our members
based in Scotland.

9. What changed along the way?
The functionality of two sections of the site were reduced/put on hold to allow
the site to be built on budget
“Being up-front about the budget early on in the process also helped as it
allowed us to work with you to prioritise and deliver the most important
features. “ Infinite Eye
We had many discussions about enabling user comments to encourage
debate amongst members. Due to limited staff resources ,we did not build this
function into the new site.

10. The new website: Home
Fully responsive web design
(tablet/phone).
Page updates based on site content.
Twitter feed.

11. The new website: Groups, organisations
and freelance directory
Listing and individual profile pages.
Searchable.
Filterable.
Google Maps integration.

12. The new website: Event template
Fields for editors make the page easy
to update.
Eventbrite integration.
Twitter hashtag feed.
Custom YouTube gallery.
Forms and PayPal integration.

13. Learning Points
Plan in as much time as possible if your staff are contributing content to your
website.
Assume that you will need additional help to do things like data entry for a new
site if you have any form of directory function.
Staffing changes can happen at your company and your supplier: build in extra
contingency time.

14. Additional successful elements
We hosted an unpaid placement for an undergraduate student to become our
Digital Project Assistant. He worked with our Marketing Manager on the site
and his tasks included photography/filming, video/image editing, writing and
publishing webpage content.
“It was great that you had a clear idea of your need based on real user
feedback from the market research phase, that was a great help when defining
the technical project requirements.”
Infinite Eye

15. What happens next?
Site launches on 7 November 2014 at our Sector Symposium event in
Edinburgh.
Email newsletter template and social media profile updates.
Encouraging the membership to complete /update their directory
profiles.
Developments to online ticketing.
Regular tweets/posts flagging up new opportunities on the site.
Ongoing soliciting/development of new content.

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www.ytas.org.uk
twitter.com/YTArtsScot
facebook.com/YTArtsScot