Lancaster Jazz Festival
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Funders & Partners
    • The Team
    • Our History
  • Support Us
    • Membership
    • Jobs & Opportunities
      • Board Recruitment 2019
    • Contact Us
  • Access
  • New website brief
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Funders & Partners
    • The Team
    • Our History
  • Support Us
    • Membership
    • Jobs & Opportunities
      • Board Recruitment 2019
    • Contact Us
  • Access
  • New website brief
Search

New website brief

We are looking for a new website to replace our current one which we find limiting (built on the free version of Weebly). This year we are evolving our organisation mission, vision and values, as well as our brand identity, and we want a website to reflect this. 

About Lancaster Jazz Festival
Lancaster Jazz Festival is:
  • An annual live contemporary jazz festival 
  • An organisation that supports emerging contemporary jazz artists year-round

The team is made up of five part-time members:
  • Lucy Wolley, Festival Manager
  • Dave Shooter, Executive Producer
  • Fergus Walsh, Company Administrator
  • Iona Lane, Programme Manager
  • Sophy Colbert, Social Media Manager

There is also a board of trustees who meet regularly to support the team and help the team achieve their organisational and strategic goals.

The team are based in Lancaster, Manchester and Leeds. We work together remotely using Zoom, Google Drive, Slack and other online collaborative tools.

Our vision, mission and values
This is a work in progress - we are currently discussing this within the team. We are hoping to flesh this out during the discovery phase, but our draft vision, mission and values are:

Vision:  The future of jazz, here in Lancaster and now.

Mission: To create a space for contemporary jazz artists to create their best work.

Values:
  • Adventurous programming that challenges and inspires audiences.
  • Open dialog with artists and audiences to create a personal, collective event.
  • To maintain an identity of innovation and progression.
  • Inclusivity and access for everyone: artists, audiences, staff, partnerships.

Users and user needs

Email sophy@lancasterjazz.com for a more detailed content framework by user need.

Our users
Our key users are:
  • Festival goers: people who go to the festival who have access needs, people who already go to the festival, people who want to go to the festival for the first time.
  • Funders: people working for organisations that already fund the festival, people working for organisations that might fund the festival
  • Working for the festival: businesses and suppliers, musicians playing at the festival, musicians thinking about playing at the festival
  • Festival team: members and potential members, volunteers and potential volunteers, board members and potential board members, team members and potential team members
User needs
Key user needs are:
  • To know when and where the festival is on
  • To be able to plan time at the festival (including accessibility information for each venue)
  • To be able to buy tickets for events with confidence
  • To know what Lancaster Jazz Festival is about: history of the festival, ethos
  • To know how Lancaster Jazz Festival operates
  • To know what it will be like to play at the festival
  • To know what the benefits are of joining as a member, board member or volunteer

Look and feel
The new website needs to be easy to use and simple to navigate, both on a desktop and a mobile.

We want the new website to give a good idea of what it is like to attend the festival.

Sites we like
https://englishtouringopera.org.uk/ - simple navigation - hides the complexity to just focus on what you need - there if you want it - burger menu means page is uncluttered
https://coloursmayvary.com/ - easy navigation, great use of imagery.
https://festivalnumber6.com/ - clean, good use of images, captures the vibe of the event (although the top bar is distracting).
https://serious.org.uk/ - not for the header banner (purpose of site needs to be clearer), but the scrolling images and sections are inviting.
https://www.boomtownfair.co.uk/ - impactful, clean, clear. Really good how the date of the event is incorporated into the logo.

Technical requirements
We need to be able to manage the website ourselves, including content, layout, domain renewal and SSL certificates. The team will source or produce the content, including text, images and video (we are open to hosting video externally, such as on YouTube or Vimeo). We might need a simple workflow, with editor and publisher roles.

We need templates for different content types: simple page, event page with ticket, schedule page (plus any other templates you recommend).

We need the website to meet the requirements in WCAG 2.1, to a AA conformance level. We will write the accessibility statement ourselves but will need some input from you.

We need the option of adding a blog and blogging capability to the website when we are ready to start blogging. 

We need to be able to sell tickets through our website (this can be through a third party solution like TicketSource or TryBooking).

We need to track usage of the website using our Google analytics account. We would like the option of adding further tracking in the future if we think it necessary, for a chat feature or CRM such as Hubspot. We will need help to set this up.

Currently the website is hosted through Weebly. The url needs to remain the same.

We may need support in future to keep up to date with the latest versions of Wordpress (or whichever CMS the site is built in), plugins and themes. 

We’d need training on how to manage the site ourselves in future.

The (draft) site structure is:
Index
    About Lancaster Jazz Festival
        The team
        The board
        Volunteers
        Previous festivals
    Information for artists
    Information for funders
    Festival information
        Schedule
        Event page
        Getting here and away
        Venue information
        Getting help

Timescales
We need the website to be live by April 2021.

Budget
We have up to £5000 for this project.

Please send your quotes to sophy@lancasterjazz.com by 18 January 2021.​
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Funders & Partners
    • The Team
    • Our History
  • Support Us
    • Membership
    • Jobs & Opportunities
      • Board Recruitment 2019
    • Contact Us
  • Access
  • New website brief