Zion Arts Launches a Real Ichameleon of a Website
PANDA partners Zion Arts Centre have launched their new website to cater for 5 to 25 year olds.
Zion Arts Centre is on a mission to inspire and enable young people from across Manchester to achieve their creative potential.
The beautiful, oldest standing building on Stretford Road in Hulme is truly embracing the Myspace and Facebook age with a suitably interactive and appealing site from charity web specialists Ichameleon.
Zion Arts Centre is a multi art form venue which offers a growing range of projects, activities and events for Manchester’s young people. Recent successes include the launch of Zion’s first Afterschool’s Club which has seen several walking buses making their way to the arts centre in the evenings so that local primary schools have been able to enjoy sessions in art and dance beyond the school curriculum.
Web Launch Event
The launch of the website was celebrated with a successful event at Zion Arts Centre on Friday 14th March.
The event saw a public introduction of Zion’s new Youth Panel which is made up of 12 boys and girls from across Manchester with different artistic skills and interests. Amongst other projects, this group who will be taking a lead on encouraging users to discuss issues, activities, opportunities and tips via the Forum on the website’s Community page.
There was also a first sneak public preview from the recently formed Zion Young Actors Company (ZYAC) ahead of their debut May production at Zion Arts Centre.
Manchester Digital Development Agency, Ichameleon and young people involved in the web development process spoke about their plans for the new site.
Sarah Gbeleyi, one of Zion’s young users, was on the interview panel that selected Ichameleon to design the new www.zionarts.com. Sarah says:
“Ichameleon seemed confident and made us feel confident in them. I asked them if they could think of a song that would summarise the creative direction of the new Zion website. They said Queen’s I Want To Break Free and that was the right answer!”
The Site
Zion’s new website will feature details of events, projects, youth opportunities, tips, venue facilities for hire and will allow meaningful interaction with the young artists the venues serves.
Caroline Boyd, Business and Audience Development Officer says:
“We are really excited about our new site because it opens up the venue to achieve its mission beyond the physical bounds of the actual building. We want to inspire and enable young people to fulfil their creative potential and quite often this means having a platform to showcase sound, video and graphics. We look forward to hearing young people’s view through opinion polls and the Forum page of the website in particular.”
The new website is live now at www.zionarts.com.