Rhizome has cultivated a strong relationship with the Valley Cultural Foundation (VCF) over the last 17 years. For the past five years, we worked alongside its late CEO, Nora Ross. Before her passing in March 2022, Nora successfully secured a grant to revamp their website in the fall of 2021. We embraced this opportunity to redesign the site in a way that would make her proud.
VCF is the second-largest non-profit organization dedicated to performing arts in Southern California. Located in the San Fernando Valley, their highly professional programs include Concerts and Movies in the Park, and a July 4th Extravaganza featuring music and fireworks, which are enjoyed by over 140,000+ people each year. Building a new site gave us a fresh opportunity to revamp its outdated events system and design and build something much better.
A Dazzling New Online Showcase
Since VCF lives and breathes in the world of the performing arts, it was crucial for us to custom-design this website in a way that was not only colorful, eye-catching, and beautiful, but in a way that provided a better glimpse into the heart of the organization and the concerts and movies they provide. This newest version of their website is a stunning example of custom WordPress Gutenberg Block development with an Eventbrite integration.
At Rhizome, one of our core values is to “Make it Easy.” The new site allows the beautiful photography of the performing artists to be featured prominently, while easily crediting dedicated volunteer photographers. We made sure to also extend the ease of use in the back-end, where Rhizome and VCF admins would handle events.
Event Handling Behind the Scenes
VCF previously employed a hand-built events system that had, over the years, become outdated. By switching to The Events Calendar, we unlocked huge potential, behind the scenes, when it came to displaying and handling events. Our admins are loving it!
With dynamic content now at our disposal, we’re able to sort and filter events according to venue, category, and more. Visitors can also choose how they’d like to display the event listing with list, archive or calendar views.
Donations
Funding for the Valley Cultural Foundation comes from generous corporate sponsors, grants, and their expansive Membership and Volunteer programs.
As part of this revamp process, we began to fully utilize the power of the GiveWP donation system in a way that admins can easily create donation forms and campaigns, offer flexible recurring donations, set up tributes, and track performance through a robust dashboard. When Nora passed, this allowed us to create a Nora Ross Memorial Fund quickly, with clean donation widgets that track amounts raised via a visual metric bar.
The New Experience
As an agency that takes pride in simplifying digital design and content experiences for organizations that truly make a positive difference, this project was very personal to us. We truly wanted to make it something Nora would be proud of, and we’re glad she got to see a small glimpse of it before she passed.
With a combination of breathtaking visuals and an improved framework, we constructed a solid digital foundation that will support Valley Cultural Foundation in continuing their nearly half-century long mission to bring arts and culture to the San Fernando Valley. We think Nora would be proud, and we look forward to seeing the bandshell renamed in her honor on June 26, 2022.
