Creekside Performing Arts Website
Creekside Middle School, Carmel, Indiana
Description
We have built a performing arts website that includes comprehensive information about band, choir, and orchestra. Our website also includes recruiting information for incoming beginners and is crucial to keeping families informed, interested, and excited about joining the performing arts. The website also houses materials, instructional videos, and calendars for our school wide musical.
Target Audience
Current parents and students, prospective parents, and students and the community.
Costs
- $110 Website hosting
- $20 Purchase of domain name
Success/Effectiveness Measurement
One way we can monitor the website’s success is through the number of recruitment registrations we receive. We can gauge who has signed up and who still needs to be contacted. Incoming performing arts families use a link on our website to sign up for instrument and vocal fittings. As a result, over 75% of our incoming 6th graders decide to join a performing arts ensemble.
Advice for others?
Building a professional looking website does not have to be a daunting process! There are a number of website builders such as Wix, Weebly and Google Sites that make it easy.
Create an image of what your programs should look like to the public. Then, work to convey this image through your website. For our website, we made the decision to provide an overview of the program that would be useful to everyone. The “nuts and bolts” type of materials such as class forms, weekly assignments, and internal documents are housed within our learning management system, Canvas. These documents can be accessed by our current parents and students. They do not reside on our public website as we feel that they would make the website too cumbersome.
Another way to limit confusion on the website is to manage what materials are accessible throughout the year. At Creekside, we hide pages that are irrelevant during certain seasons. For example, our recruitment page is only visible during the spring semester when we are actively recruiting. This helps to keep our website streamlined and easy to navigate.
Pictures help to keep our website interesting and show that the focus of the program is on the students and their educational experience. (Be aware of your school’s policies regarding publishing photos of students to ensure that your website photos respect parent and community preferences.)
