Open Youth Trust Website.

The website is the platform from which young people interact with the venue and a community for regional young people to engage with each other and OPEN.

The OPEN Youth Trust is a charity which was established with the primary purpose of developing and delivering the very best facilities and services for young people in Norfolk.

In July 2009 a brand new £12m venue was opened in the centre of Norwich built especially for the 12-25 year olds living in the area to have a place to go and positive things to do. Within the building there’s a night club and climbing wall as well as dance and recording studios.

Soup was selected, at pitch, to design and build OPEN’s website: the platform from which young people would interact with the venue and a community for regional young people to engage with each other and OPEN.

Digital is the ideal channel to engage with young people as its integral to their lives. As digital natives, technology is not seen as a separate entity, rather it is a facilitator, helping them keep in touch with their friends and supporting their interests.

Soup interviewed a group of young people from Norfolk to discover what they would want from a website associated with OPEN. A key conclusion of that research was the importance of social media. It was also clear that young people wanted to create the content for the site with their groups of friends.

The project worked around a two-phased approach. Initially Soup delivered a microsite to coincide with the launch of the OPEN venue in September 2009. This provided information about OPEN: what you could do there and what was happening when. Soup also designed the flyers and posters to promote the opening club night, which sold out in a few days.

A Facebook group was created to be a key touch point for members to talk to each other and where OPEN could promote events and information.  

The second phase of the project was the main website which replaced the microsite. The website launched this month with increased functionality and social features. The website makes use of Facebook Connect; users can sign into the site using their Facebook login and automatically share information between the site and social network. Greater engagement is encouraged by allowing users to ‘like’ and rate articles on the site, which then appear on their Facebook home page. Users can also connect to OPEN through Twitter, Bebo and Myspace.

The website contains detailed information about all the different gigs, events and activities at OPEN, however, if young people can’t get to OPEN they can also use the site to find out what is happening closer to home, they can enter their postcode and any activities or clubs near them will appear. 

The OPEN Facebook group has been extremely active with 3,683 friends. OPEN staff are committed to responding as soon as possible to any queries and comments posted. Members also talk amongst themselves on the group: arranging to meet up and what they might wear to the club nights.

Events at OPEN have been extremely successful; nearly all of the club nights have sold out.  

The main website has only been live for a few days and is already encouraging increased interaction with OPEN. Visitors especially ‘like’ the chance to win signed Tinchy Stryder goodies by signing up as a friend of OPEN