News

It has been a busy few weeks working with Tees Valley Education on the launch of new websites for the five academies that form the Trust.

The sites for Brambles Primary Academy, Discovery Special Academy, Dormanstown Primary Academy, Pennyman Primary Academy and Wilton Primary Academy were launched on Wednesday.

The key to the brief was consistency. The Trust wanted all school sites to have a similar look and feel. It was also important that the websites were mobile responsive and also include a translate feature.

We have also delivered in class training to the five schools on the easy to use platform.

This project was the third web project Academy Creative have supported Tees Valley Education with. In the past year Academy Creative also built a new website for TVE and also their Teaching School.

Over the past few days we have taken the appropriate steps to ensure we can still operate as a business during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

We are lucky that all of our services can be carried out remotely and we have access to all our design files. Whilst we won’t be arranging any face-to-face meetings with clients in the coming weeks, we are available to discuss projects via email, phone or by video call. We use a range of technologies that assist with remote working.

Like any small business, we still need your support during these challenging times and we would love to discuss any marketing project you might have planned for the future.

Thanks
Gavin, Mark and Owain. 

Galileo Academy Trust, made up of 10 schools, formally launched on 1st April 2018. Academy Creative have been supporting the newly-formed Trust for several months on a range of marketing projects.

Initially, Academy Creative worked with the leadership team of Galileo Trust, carrying our consultation on the branding. Our design team was them able to create a range of concepts which could then be rolled out across all communications by the Trust.

A new website was essential to the project and would act as the first point of contact when the public enquire about the Trust. Information and policies needed to be displayed, and needed to be easily found by website users. High quality images were used to give a professional look to the website.

“We have enjoyed working with Anna Coulson and her team on the entire project. We have a great working relationship with a number of the schools involved in the Trust and we were delighted to be involved in the initial setup,” Owain Jenkins, Director, Academy Creative.

Just before Easter we had a really enjoyable day with sixth form students from Beverley School. Based in Middlesbrough, Beverley is a specialist school for children and young people with autism. As part of their GCSE Business Studies course, students had to research a local business (MMD) and analyse the market they operate in. We spent time talking to the students about our industry and possible career routes after they finish their studies. Really looking forward to working with the group in the future on a number of projects.

Not sure this is based ‘entirely’ on their choice of website provider, but it great to see two of our schools in Teesside’s Top 10 Primary Schools. Saint Bede’s Catholic VA Primary School in Redcar was ranked second in the guide, whilst Hartburn Primary School were just behind in 3rd place.

Both schools use our Academy Creative website platform, benefiting from a professional design and easy to use CMS. If you are involved in a school that would be interested in a new website please get in touch and we can arrange a time to visit.

01642 955680 or team@academycreative.co.uk

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We are really looking forward to launching the new website for St Peter’s Voluntary Catholic Academy in January 2018. This will be the first Secondary School to use our bespoke school website platform, joining many Primary Schools and Academy Trusts already enjoying the benefits of the system.

Watch this space for more detail on the process involved in building the Secondary School site and what makes it different from a Primary School build.

We recently launched a new website for Tees Valley Education Teaching School Alliance. Built using our bespoke education CMS platform, the site has had great feedback from staff. The Teaching Alliance was launched earlier in the year, with a newly established team managing a number of areas of teacher support.

The website promotes a growing list of events and workshops and also has a login area where over 200 teachers already have access to. This is for charing files and good practise in clearly categorised areas.

We look forward to forming a long-term relationship with the Teaching School Alliance.

Academy Creative have been working with Hartlepool Sixth Form College for a number of years supporting a wide range of marketing activities. The main print job with the College each year is the annual prospectus. This years is a fresh, modern design with an embossed print on the front colour. We were delighted with the final product and the College have had excellent feedback from students and parents at their recent open evenings.

You can view the prospectus online at the link attached.

We are often asked what makes our school websites stand out from the rest? Whilst we take great pride in the custom designs we offer schools, the area we have invested most of our time in has been our bespoke CMS system.

We understand that school resources can be quite stretched which means administration tasks need to be as easy as possible. Our system is built very much with this in mind, implementing a carefully designed user interface. Schools can have multiple logins, with varying levels of admin rights.

Over the years many agencies have relied on WordPress as the ‘go-to’ CMS system. We used to do this ourselves. They can offer many different widgets and plugins which can work for some businesses. What they don’t do is create a solution bespoke to a target audience, in this case the education sector.

Before spending close to 12 months developing our system, we carried out a wide range of research on school websites. This included speaking to students, teachers and parents. We wanted to find out what each group wanted from the website and how we could help use the most modern technology to make their life easy.

School staff said they wanted a clear dashboard where they could find sections easily and not worry about breaking anything.

We are based in the North East but work with schools across UK and Ireland. We are more than happy to visit your school to give a live demonstration of the CMS system and show how the website would look with your school branding.

Contact us on 01642 955681 for more information or email team@academycreative.co.uk

Last year we successfully launched our school website platform which has proved a big hit with those operating in the education sector. We are now in a position to roll this service out to nursery schools.

The main benefit to our website system is an easy to use admin system which is built to make updating the website as simple as possible. We understand not every nursery school will have dedicated IT support and the websites are built with this in mind.

The aim of our pricing model is to provide you with the highest level of customer support. The monthly payments include all of your website hosting, ongoing support, training and updates. Technology can constantly evolve, with our subscription sites we will be providing updates to sites on an on going basis meaning there is no need to worry about your nursery school website becoming dated.

We are happy to visit your nursery school to show you how the platform works and talk through your needs.

Pricing for a new nursery school website is £500 + VAT set up fee followed by monthly payments of £75 + VAT.

Contact team@acdemycreative.co.uk for more information.

In April 2015 ​we launched Academy Creative​, ​an exciting new​ ​brand ​operating extensively in the eduction sector​​.​ The interest and growth of Academy Creative has created the need for us to build the core team, so we are now looking to employ a full time senior developer to head up the development team and provide insight on all things digital.​

​The role will focus on the web, primarily the LAMP and LEMP stack; so expertise in this area is essential. The ideal candidate will have a strong development background, with experience in the provision (and administration) of a dedicated linux hosting infrastructure. Familiarity with virtualised and cloud based infrastructures is also required.

You will be working alongside a team with years of experience in an open and relaxed environment where you’ll be able to drive projects forward, while also developing junior members of the team and supporting our growing business development. While prior management experience is not essential, you will be expected to shape and manage the development team to meet the needs of the business.

What are we looking for academically?

​- ​4​ or more​​ years​ ​experience in​ ​​a web development role
​- ​A degree level qualification in a relevant discipline

​And professionally?​

​- ​A proven track record working with web technologies
​- A creative thinker with good communication
– The ability to create and maintain project specifications and supporting documentation
– A proven track record managing and meeting project deadlines
– The ability to support existing web based projects
– The drive to monitor and maintain quality in all digital media produced

What kind of technology do we use at the minute?

​​- On the front end we tend to use HTML5, CSS, jQuery​ and bootstrap​
​- On the back end ​we tend to use ​​MySQL, PHP​, Laravel​
​- Our creative team use Adobe Creative Suite​
​- We work on Mac’s and store everything ​GIT

We’re offering a starting salary of up to £30​k​pa for the right candidate. ​If you you’ve got the skills but lack something specific in the above, ​thats not the end of the world​ and we won’t be offended so please feel free to apply.

Email team@academycreative with your up to date CV.

January has been a busy month at Academy Creative HQ in Stockton. In the past week three new school websites have been launched on our bespoke primary school website platform. Errington Primary, Wheatlands Primary and St Bedes Academy have all been added to the new system which is aimed to provide staff with an easy to use system whilst also looking great.

If your school could benefit from a new website please get in touch on team@academycreative.co.uk or 01642 655681. We are more than happy to visit schools to show you live demonstrations on how the site works.