Recourse is the new website for the College & University Support Network to replace the one that had been at cusn.info. The project was more than a website redesign, it was also an endeavor in rebranding the charity which serves post-16 education (adult, further and higher education) professionals in UK. Recourse replaced CUSN as the name of the charity this weekend as it was launched at the University and College Union Congress in Manchester on Monday.
I worked with with Mymedia on branding and design as well as Connect Assist in incorporating the Rightnow CRM used to provide support services to higher education staff and faculty.
The backdrop to the relaunch is an education sector in crisis. Unprecedented funding cuts have led to job losses, increased workloads, financial worries and the complex stresses associated with working within an atmosphere of insecurity. The charity is dedicated to providing financial, emotional and practical support to higher education staff and is part of the Teacher Support Network group of charities. Read the rest of this entry »
As part of the Committee to Protect Bloggers, I teamed up with Wordia.com to promote Blogging Nation Week, during which time we gathered different Web professionals to define words applying to online expression. The week was in part a tribute to the successful relaunch of the Committee to Protect Bloggers as well as highlight the ongoing challenges people face both by governments and business when trying to push online expression forward.
I took it offline for a crash redesign during the course of about a week in August and relaunched it with an expanded team and slightly augmented mission. As well as being an information site about bloggers being arrested and intimidated, we’re also focusing on legal issues, technology and tutorials aimed at keeping bloggers from behind bars and worse and partnering with more organisations working on digital rights. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday evening I launched the new Teacher Support Network’s group charity website. This has been a long time in the making with a number of revisions that reflects the pros and cons of the group process, but in the end, I think we came up with a stunning design that’s both unique and highly functional.
I worked with web developer Nigel Parry and designer Ken Harper (Iron Clad Images) over the last spring and summer to develop a new look and better navigation flow for the site as well as a number of tools designed to increase the usability and accessability of the site. The result is years beyond the previous one. We moved off of Drupal and over to Interactive Tools’ Article Manager 2.
I’m now on the advisory board for ITTP and am truly humbled by the company I’m in. ITTP trains practitioners to treat complex trauma inflicted by torture, war, and natural disasters. The goal of the International Trauma Treatment Program is to undermine the use of torture through establishing an international network of practitioners who fight torture by transforming torture victims into survivors.
From the website:
“Practitioners from war zones who participate in our program become prepared to treat, and to train other practitioners to treat, trauma survivors in their home countries. We thereby seek to leverage our resources by creating a snowball effect that greatly increases the number of practitioners worldwide that fight torture.”
Handling the web technology for this group and consulting on tech issues with the many great people associated with it puts me pretty far off from the experiences that others on the advisory board have, as I sit safely behind a computer screen here in London. Other advisory board members, many of them practicioners themselves, are working in medical facilities, refugee camps and trauma treatment centers in Zimbabwe, the occupied Palestinian territories, Sri Lanka, Uganda and other places where people face first hand the human capacity for brutality and also for assistance in healing.
Recourse is the new website for the College & University Support Network to replace the one that had been at cusn.info. The project was more than a website redesign, it was also an endeavor in rebranding the charity which serves post-16 education (adult, further and higher education) professionals in UK. Recourse replaced CUSN as the name of the charity this weekend as it was launched at the University and College Union Congress in Manchester on Monday.
Earlier this summer I took over managing the 
The 
Web design and media strategies consultant
