Charnwood Arts
Rebuilding online offering for a local arts hub.
Overview.
Charnwood Arts is a community arts and cultural organisation based in Loughborough, Leicestershire, in the East Midlands. They collaborate with local artists, community groups, and other organisations to deliver creative opportunities and cultural activities.
Their mission is to use the arts to inspire, empower, and connect individuals and communities, supporting personal development, well-being, and social change.
This project was completed in conjunction with Darren Designs Ltd.
Brief.
Charnwood Arts had recently commissioned a new brand identity, as well as the accompanying design and build of their new website.
However, the organisation were now looking to streamline their offering and was having difficulties with content management, which is when they reached out to Darren Designs.
The original brief was to merge sections, update content and re-evaluate UX. All of which was hosted and built on Squarespace.
After working together at two agencies previously and knowing my experience with platforms like Squarespace, Darren brought me on board to support with the project.
Response.
While investigating how Charnwood Arts’ website had been built, I uncovered several inconsistencies which would make a simple content task into a more structured response. The website had been put together in a very unconventional way, particularly for a platform like Squarespace, which is relatively user-friendly. There were two immediate outcomes from this discovery.
We either invest time in understanding how this CMS has been configured and where the limitations lie. Or, we address the root cause of why this brief was sent in the first place: a struggle to manage and update content themselves. I recommended the second route. Darren and I would work closely together to streamline the user experience, taking into consideration their initial brief, and rebuild the site completely.
After reworking the sitemap and mocking up wireframes for key pages, the main changes we made were around differentiating What’s On and What We Do, which were originally indistinguishable and confusing to website visitors. Initially, both of these sections served the same purpose; the content was muddled, and the actual offering wasn’t abundantly clear.
What’s On would now reuse existing calendar functionality, but be fleshed out into a distinct experience where users find what’s happening. We added category filtering, which made browsing their huge library of events much simpler, and also gave us the freedom to embed content, now it’s filtered, elsewhere on the site.
What We Do would break down the key offerings of Charnwood Arts (Programmes, Exhibitions, Workshops, Events) into separate sections, with the focus being on education. Visitors would then be shown the categories associated with each, and when they reach a point of interest (ie, to view associated events), they are pointed back to What’s On to explore and/or make a booking.
Elsewhere, we upgraded to the latest version of Squarespace and rebuilt every page on the website, condensing and streamlining content as we went along. This approach meant we could have an experience which is easily managed into the future, particularly taking advantage of the new ‘reusable component’ functionality.
Results.
Charnwood Arts has been successfully managing the website itself since handing over at the beginning of 2026. CMS training videos, which explain how the website works, were provided to the team to support future team-members in the future.
To automate the process even further, we are now collaborating with the organisation on integrating Acuity Scheduling, which will allow them to take bookings and manage capacity on specific events without the admin headaches they currently endure.
