Co-creating our new website
How we co-created our website with care-experienced young people
How did we co-create this website?
In July 2021, we began work on a brand new website for Become, joining forces with co-production experts, Effervescent UK, and web design agency, Venn Creative.
We put a call-out for care-experienced young people (aged 13 to 26) from across England to join our Web Design Team and help create a website that enables young people to access support and build connections.
We had a fantastic response! Our final 10 members of the design group showed us their impressive creativity, skills, ideas, and commitment to shaping a website for young people, by young people.
We worked together on Zoom for a whole week in August 2021 on an intensive design sprint. This involved creative tasks, silly ‘badverts’, and serious discussions to uncover what we wanted the new website to look and feel like. Our care-experienced group members shared some personal insights from moments of their care journey, which really helped us to understand what support and information should be included on this site. At the end of the week, we had a clear vision for the Become website you’re visiting today – and it was time to make it happen.
We met again in October 2021 to ensure the website being built still aligned with the Web Design Team’s vision (and it certainly did!). We also started to refine details of the website, such as language and photography. While progress continued, we stayed in touch with mini projects and questions for the group.
The website you see now is a direct result of all of us working together to make a safe, reassuring, and empowering online space. And we couldn’t have done this without the care-experienced young people on our team who co-created this website: Austin, Corey, Em, Emily, Leah, Meg, Taeja, Sancia, VJ and Yaaseen.
Thank you.
Our Web Design Team
With special massive thanks to our Web Design team members.
Amelia Whyman, age 25 (Become)
Amy Grant, age 28 (Become)
Austin Dewson, age 16
Corey Dunford, age 20
Dani Knight, age 22 (Effervescent)
Eloïse Malone, age 44 (Effervescent)
Emily Turner, age 22
Emily Statham, age 22
Henrietta Imoreh, age 27 (Become)
Leah Musekiwa, age 15
Louise Hannaford, age 26 (Venn Creative)
Meg Mitchell, age 21
Phil Innes, age 51 (Effervescent)
Sam Turner, age 31 (Become)
Shakira Henry, age 44 (Become)
Sancia Williams, age 24
Taeja Clarke, age 18
VJ Clarke, age 14
Yaaseen Azam, age 22
Zander Grinfeld, age 42 (Venn Creative)
Thanks also to Alicia, Becca, Jade and Will from Become for their help with the project.