First 5 Lambeth - The Idea Bureau

Introduction

The CoCreate fund was instigated by the (Lambeth Early Action Partnership (LEAP)) in 2022 off the back of the work they’d undertaken over the last 10 years. The fund’s aim is to make positive and lasting change in the lives of Lambeth’s young children, and with LEAP providing the groundwork and infrastructure, ten organisations joined together to create and improve upon the opportunities available for local families – this is how First 5 Lambeth came into being.

The first Lambeth-based consortium of its kind, First 5 Lambeth focuses specifically on early-years support. Its diverse makeup and experience has allowed the community organisations to combine to underpin services that cater for all local children and their families, no matter their background.

First 5 Lambeth have delivered over 200 events and activities, co-designing their offering with parents of children under 4 in ‘learning network’ events. Having worked in isolation for years, this opportunity to come alongside each other in a network of like-minded organisations has made those participating feel more supported and energised to do the work than ever before.

The Problem

The main aspect of the project was to create a ‘one-stop shop’ for families in the Lambeth area – it would need to showcase events and activities that can be sorted via the different age groups they represent, as well as highlight the support available to them. With only a small amount of funding available, whoever worked on the project would have to be incredibly creative with what they could provide for the First 5 Lambeth team.

“We’re a new consortium of diverse community organisations providing support for families and their young children in Lambeth. First5Lambeth might be new, but it was born from a network of support pioneered by LEAP, improving children’s life chances through investing in early years provisions and knitting local services, like our own, together. It was vital that these parents recognised First5Lambeth as a continuation of the activities and support that they had come to trust.”

Phil Byrne

Communications Officer at Lambeth Early Action Partnership

Our Solution

We were introduced to First 5 Lambeth by our main contact from LEAP – after completing a pitching process, we were accepted as experts for the project. Our expertise and company value is in creating bespoke websites that are designed to align with the needs of an organisation; however, because of the funding constraints, we decided the best way forward would be to use an existing WordPress theme. Having this as a starting point, we would then heavily customise it for the client’s specific requirements and to match their branding, to ensure it looked like a completely bespoke build. This meant there was less development time needed and we could focus more on amending the original design.

The project was completed over 2 months – part of this time was needed to research an appropriate theme that we could customise to suit their needs. We instigated a discovery workshop with key members of the organisation, where we discussed what a successful project outcome would look like for them, and created a sitemap in conjunction with the team. The workshop also focused on understanding what the user types would be: we had to figure out the best way to group the age ranges to best fit with First 5 Lambeth’s audience, as well as gaining an understanding of the best placement for the Events and Support sections of the website (i.e. on separate sections of the website, or together). After this took place, we began putting together the different pages and exploring ways to enhance and customise the theme.

Client:: First 5 Lambeth
Project Type:: Website Build
Link:: first5lambeth.org/
Tags:: Workshops, UI, UX, Development

How the website works

The project required little development time, as it was a more design-focused project. However, we created some custom functionality to extend the usefulness of the theme we chose – this included modifying the WordPress Events Calendar plugin to enable precise filtering of data, and building a custom function to showcase support by areas of need and organisations.

While the project was less heavy in development time, there was still a lot of work involved in building the user experience across the website so that it functioned as expected, and was engaging and easy to use for the end-users. We also had to create a strong information architecture – all while working within the constraints of the theme’s available components, maximising what they could do.

While we’ve previously worked with themes before, there was a slight learning curve in implementing Elementor over Gutenberg as a CMS, as it’s not one that we’ve worked with before.

Working together

This website required little development time, as it was a more design-focused project. However, we created some custom functionality to extend the usefulness of the theme we chose – this included modifying the WordPress Events Calendar plugin to enable precise filtering of data, and building a custom function to showcase support by areas of need and organisations.

While the project was less heavy in development time, there was still a lot of work involved in building the user experience across the website so it functioned as expected, and was engaging and easy to use for the end-users. We also had to create a strong information architecture – all while working within the constraints of the theme’s available components, maximising what they could do.

While we’ve previously used themes, there was a slight learning curve in implementing Elementor over Gutenberg as a CMS, as it’s not one that we’ve worked with before.

“The Idea Bureau really helped us to focus in on the user experience, getting the very most out of the budget we had. You could sense that the cause was just as important to them as it was to us. They wanted to get it right. They did that and more. Thank you for being so committed to helping us achieve our aims.”

Phil Byrne

Communications Officer at Lambeth Early Action Partnership

Customising features to showcase our client’s offering

There were two very important features in the build project to bring the First 5 Lambeth website to life: the first was for users to be able to filter data, such as the type of activities the First 5 Lambeth website signposts to, types of support by different needs, and also by age range. To give users the ability to filter the information in this way, we added custom modifications to the Events Calendar plugin. Secondly, we created a custom support function to add organisations that provide different types of support to the people of Lambeth. These are presented as support cards on the various age range pages. We then added a new area within the CMS which allows the team to add new organisations themselves, which outputs them onto the website with a custom design.

Conclusion

This new website has put the First 5 Lambeth consortium in control of their content, allowing them to independently update it as often as they need. We specialise in collaborating with not-for-profit organisations and charities – as such, it was a pleasure to work on this project off the back of having done so with LEAP previously.

It enabled us to assist First 5 Lambeth in giving Lambeth’s families a single source of truth to find valuable support and activities for themselves and their little ones. If a client’s budget is constrained, we’re happy to discuss how we can still create something highly considered that works for them with fewer resources.