Sampad South Asian Arts

Problem

How does a community arts organisation with limited resources reflect reflect the exciting and dynamic diversity of their programme online?

Brief

sampad is a dynamic development agency for South Asian Arts based in Birmingham. It plays a significant role regionally, nationally and beyond, in promoting the appreciation and practice of the diverse artforms originating from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

As a long-term Made Media client, sampad were used to the convenience of being able to update the content of their own website. Since sampad is in the business of promoting events and projects, their website can't stand still. Although sampad were successfully getting up-to-the-minute information about events and news online, they felt that the website wasn't successfully portraying the flavour of the projects. Imagery was abundant, with many events having press photos and even video footage. sampad felt that they needed to get this material online with the same ease and regularity that they could update text.

Solution

• Made Media upgraded the sampad website onto the latest version of our Content Management System, Backstage.
• Diary, Event and News pages were redesigned to make use of large-colour images and thumbnails.
• The Content Management System was updated to allow the attachment of multiple images to a story. Image processing code was added to automatically crop and resize images to fit the layouts. This means that sampad could upload any image within reason, and the system would automatically fit it to the page layout.
• A Media Gallery was added, featuring video and audio in Streaming Macromedia Flash format.

Outcome

• The sampad website is a riot of colour and action, more accurately reflecting the organisation.
• The entire content of the website is under --the control-- of the organisation, meaning it's always up-to-date.
• The image management features have made it into the standard Backstage package, meaning that images are as easy to add to your website as text.

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