A Learning Platform for The Performing Arts
SETTING THE SCENE
The Share Foundation, a charity that supports care-experienced young people by helping them access Junior ISAs or Child Trust Funds, as well as offering Stepladder of Achievement, a successful online programme to build skills around literacy, numeracy and financial capability, approached Zebedee to provide the management back-end for a new initiative to promote engagement with the performing arts, Stepping Forward.
HOW THE PROGRAMME WORKS
This programme, launched in partnership with Tring Park School for the Performing Arts and the Rothschild Foundation, allows young people aged 13 to 17 to learn interactively about all aspects of disciplines like drama, dance, singing and backstage technical skills, including in-depth tutorials and conversations with professional performers and leading industry figures. This allows them to gain a wide range of useful skills such as confidence and resilience that can be transferred to other areas of personal development, as well as incentives such as rewards transferred into their Junior ISA or Child Trust Fund and accreditation via Arts Award.
The Share Foundation needed a development partner which could ensure a secure membership management platform so that the Stepping Forward programme, produced by media company Particle 6, followed the same strict data protection standards implemented for the Stepladder programme, whilst at the same time allowing a flexible interface for seamless user journeys for the participants.
A Robust Backend to Support Creative Engagement
In close collaboration with the Share Foundation team, Zebedee defined a clear scope for platform integration which set a clear information flow and data governance framework to guide subsequent development, including a functional delimitation of the different components to ensure the strict data protection requirements for this application were fulfilled.
Zebedee’s experience with data encryption for the Stepladder programme allowed us to reduce overheads whilst maintaining the highest standards for security and enhanced data protection compliance.
Based on a solid data management foundation, the next step was to provide interoperability between the platforms, which provided the features for registration, authentication and completion of the programme, as well as a management and reporting interface which allowed the Share Foundation to seamlessly run all aspects of the course participants and their rewards. This was achieved by developing secure API endpoints connecting different providers in a way that maximised efficiency and modularity. Also, Zebedee’s extensive experience in programming languages like .NET, JavaScript, SQL and PHP was required to bring together all the various platforms to work seamlessly as a single connected application.
The implementation also covered a stringent testing phase during which every component was probed for vulnerabilities and failures, allowing for early management of potential issues to ensure a flawless production deployment.
The Results
The programme has enabled more than 170 enrolments since launch with almost 20% completing the programme and the rest working actively on it, based on the integration code implemented by Zebedee. Our admin interface has enabled the Share Foundation to get real-time snapshots of participation and the tools to effectively support young persons on their journey to a successful participation.
If you are looking to achieve similar goals, we can’t emphasise enough how important it is, to recognise that you will need an agency which has solid experience in technical implementations. And that agency needs to be willing to have a “hands-on” approach which will support every stage of the project.
Talk to our talented web development team to discuss your idea.
Julio, your dedication and positivity in supporting the launch of the Stepping Forward programme have been invaluable. Your consistent excellence in everything you do make us proud to work with you.