Bridport Arts Centre
2016 - Present
The arts
2016 - Present
The arts
Bridport Arts Centre is a multifaceted creative hub in Dorset offering a plethora of music, theatre, comedy, dance and film events and exhibitions.
Situated in the former Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in the heart of Bridport, the centre has been providing theatrical delights since 1973.
The arts centre also encompasses The Bridport Prize — an international writing competition — alongside two long-running festivals ‘From Page to Screen’ and ‘The Bridport Open Book Festival’.
Representing a wide arts offering, driven by public support
There’s a lot going on at the Bridport Arts Centre, and it was important that the multifaceted website performed both visually and on a technical level.
Following our successfully integrated build for The Mercury Theatre, we were approached by Bridport to build a new site utilising the same Spektrix integration platform.
With an existing brand already somewhat established, there was a very open degree of flexibility with its interpretation due to the wide scope of design styles applied to its marketing. Therefore we needed to simplify and extend their brand to bring together their online and offline presence.
A strong sense of community and social activity was important, so we established this through well thought-out use of colour systems, photography and art direction.
Open to interpretation
Although established, the centre had a very open brand identity, making it tricky at first to identify a core style. After exploring two concepts, we achieved a simplified, understated look that represented the community engaging the general public.
While similar in functionality to The Mercury Theatre, there were many differences, both on the surface and behind the scenes.
The centre’s support received from the public was paramount and we needed to emphasise and encourage this support and investment by both its patrons and the funding providers.
With the help of Spektrix integration, we implemented a dynamic and creative donation system, allowing Bridport to raise funds for anything — from free tickets to a whole production!
Embracing public support
As with all sites the importance of accessibility can’t be overlooked. The user experience, on both desktop and mobile, was streamlined to make the user experience as smooth as possible, helping the user to find the right ticket for the right event, with ease.
One of the key objectives of the brief was to increase donation and funding income from the website. As with all our projects, we try to exceed the expectation, but sometimes we have to work within the restraint of third-party systems.
The Spektrix support team worked very closely with us to ensure we designed and built a system that was fully integrated with their platform, and offered a fantastic user experience.
Pushing Spektrix integration
We literally pushed the boundaries of the integration, and Spektrix again complimented us on the finished product. Following the commendation for The Mercury Theatre Spektrix integration — we are positioning ourselves as a leading integration partner.
Bridport Art Centre has embraced the website’s capabilities through its CMS and integration. We continue to provide the centre technical support through our hosting and maintenance package, along with dedicated training days for new staff.
It’s live! It looks great! We are very pleased. Thank you for the hard work throughout the entire process…
