Upbeat Web Presence for Music Charity

Guest post by Ollie Smallwood, Trustee of Upbeat

Thanks to the matchmaking possibilities of Pimp My Cause and the hard work of Ed Kemp and Rob Porter, Upbeat (London based Music and Mental Health Charity) is excited to announce the completion of the design stage of their new website.

Upbeat is a registered charity and limited company providing a range of services, which support the recovery of people with mental health issues through music and performance. Unlike mainstream healthcare, it focuses on music and the arts as a way of creating a community, support network and vehicle for client rehabilitation.

With several high profile charity music gigs in the pipeline for later in 2013, Upbeat are now looking for a programmer to get their impressive new site up and running and would be extremely grateful to hear from web developers in the Pimp My Cause community who might like to assist. Please contact lucia@upbeatmusic.org.

 

The process of creating a new website began in August 2011 when Upbeat signed up to the Pimp My Cause website and became aware of an opportunity to directly approach a growing number of marketing professionals through this online platform. Upbeat duly contacted Ed Kemp about a redesign of their outdated website.

Ed kindly accepted the challenge, offered his skills in planning and wire framing, and recommended Rob Porter for the design aspect of the new site. A meeting between Ed, Rob and Upbeat representatives soon followed and the outline for Upbeat’s new virtual home was established. The brief was to provide a high impact site that would appeal to supporters of the charity from a mental health and musical perspective. The site should be easy to use and easy to run (with Upbeat having limited time and resources).

Rob and Ed’s background in designing bespoke online solutions for a range of clients helped to establish a clear vision for the homepage to be supplemented with the use of video and musical content generated by Upbeat’s service users. Most importantly for a small charity, the homepage needs to have an instant appeal to potential donors visiting for the first time. It is hoped that the combination of Ed’s layout, Rob’s design, music, photos and advertised support of high profile patrons Coldplay will achieve this.

With these requirements in mind Ed established the wireframe for Upbeat’s new homepage within a couple of months allowing Rob to get to work on the design. Despite personal and work circumstances changing for Upbeat members, Ed and Rob last year, all parties never lost site of the initial vision. Completion of sub level pages was fitted around busy schedules and Upbeat would like to thank Ed and Rob for abiding by their original commitment and producing an eye-catching and professional end product.

Upbeat would also like to re-iterate their gratitude to Pimp My Cause for facilitating such invaluable pro-bono work. I hope the Pimp My Cause readers like the new design as much as Upbeat do. We look forward to hearing from anyone who can help Upbeat programme the site and thereby reach out to a far wider audience.