The challenge

Five organisations, two countries, one cross-border project team, no website.

Coracle is a regional partnership programme initiated by five education and Arts organisations in West Wales and South East Ireland. Its aim is to enhance cultural, commercial and employment opportunities for artists and performers on both sides of the Irish Sea.

Encompassing everything from MBA in Professional Arts Management to photography and poetry readings in the pub, the programme - led by University of Wales Trinity Saint David - encourages participation in and exposure of the Arts in all its glorious forms.

From the off, the website was identified as the channel for providing a portfolio space in which students and artists in Ireland and Wales could engage directly with the Coracle programme and other users to showcase their work, gain feedback on their portfolio and collaborate on new projects in English and in Welsh.

Our approach

Nameless isn't well known for its awe-inspiring watercolours of sweeping Welsh vales, but we are rather good at planning, designing, and building top notch, user-friendly, cutting edge online experiences.

From our palette of CMS options, we picked Drupal 7: a powerful and flexible solution which could deliver a robust, scalable platform which we could enhance with our own coding talents to go above and beyond Coracle's specific objectives and integrate with social media.

It's not just about the technical solution though; aesthetics and user experience (UX) were big priorities given the artistic talents abounding in the target audience. Our three stage design process involved the five partners from the off and there was plenty of opportunity for review, discussion and the exchange of smiles.

In order to evaluate and improve the site's UX we conducted usability testing with participants drawn from the Coracle programme's target audience

The results

Google 'Coracle launch' and you'll get pictures of people setting off in odd little boats. Not quite what happened back in October 2012 when the website was officially unveiled under the Coracle programme, creating a collaborative vibrant space accessible to all.

We are incredibly proud to continue to be supporting the Coracle website and look forward to being involved in the future when the website will be enhanced to enable Coracle to become a self-sustaining programme.