Clore Leadership has spent more than 20 years developing leaders across the arts, culture and creative sectors. But the organisation had evolved significantly and its website hadn’t kept pace. What had once been centred around its prestigious Fellowship had grown into a much broader mix of programmes, courses, resources, research, governance support and an extensive alumni network. The new education website needed to make that breadth feel like an opportunity rather than a complication.
Our discovery process started with the people using it. Prospective applicants, current participants, Fellows, alumni, mentors, partners, funders and researchers all arrived with different needs, while the existing experience often assumed people already understood Clore Leadership, its terminology and which programme they were looking for.
Heartbeat
Someone might be taking their first step into leadership, looking to develop specific skills, moving into a senior role or wanting to share their experience as a mentor. Rather than expecting everyone to understand Clore’s organisational structure, we organised the experience around what people were trying to achieve.
Programmes became easier to explore and compare, with clearer information around eligibility, commitment, costs, funding and applications. We also created a Find the right programme tool that asks visitors about their career stage, goals, preferred type of learning and time commitment before recommending relevant opportunities. The original discovery work identified this question, “Is this right for me?”, as one of the most important things prospective applicants needed the website to answer. The tool remains a prominent part of the live experience today.
But Clore Leadership is not simply a collection of courses. Its ambition was for the website to become an essential resource for cultural leaders, so we gave its considerable library of thinking a much stronger role too. Articles, research, videos, provocation papers and other resources can now be explored by subject and format, connecting formal programmes with ongoing leadership learning.
Impact
The result is a digital platform that better reflects what Clore Leadership has become: a place to discover, develop and continue your leadership journey.
The new experience connects programmes, learning, applications, alumni, impact and the wider Clore community rather than treating them as separate destinations. It also creates clearer routes for partners and funders to understand the organisation’s reach and impact, something identified as an important audience need during discovery.
Today the site supports a network of more than 2,600 leaders and around 1,200 people engaging with Clore’s programming each year, while continuing to accommodate an expanding range of programmes and leadership resources.
Most importantly, people no longer need to arrive knowing exactly what they’re looking for. The website can help them work that out.
