If you’ve found the new Birmingham Community Matters (BCM) website: hooray!

We deliberately haven’t announced its arrival because this is a soft launch.

We want to use the new BCM website ourselves and work on its resources before we tell the world about its existence.

This new BCM website has been a while coming, with no thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. When we first made a callout for a web developer in early 2020, we were busy adapting BCM’s services to be digital and keep people safe from the virus. Our core team was also juggling caring responsibilities, home learning, isolation periods, bouts of Covid … you name it, we felt it.

Expanding BCM’s reach

Also we didn’t know what BCM’s services would look like in a post-pandemic world. This made the design of our new BCM website tricky. As our 2020-2021 annual report shows, going online enabled us to expand BCM’s reach across Birmingham. Many community organisations said they liked the convenience and accessibility in getting BCM’s support digitally. Others said they welcomed the chance to meet in person.

Therefore, parts of this new BCM website have gone through various iterations to reflect the services we’ve finally arrived at: a mixture of online and in-person support, delivered through organised events and pre-booked one-to-one sessions.

Thank you

Although it’s been a while coming, we’re so pleased with our new BCM website and the way it conveys BCM’s messages and services simply. Thank you to our core funder, the National Lottery’s Reaching Communities England fund, for enabling us to pay for it.

Thank you to Paul Tranter of Birmingham web development agency Citrus Frog for his excellent design and development skills – and endless patience.

While Paul designed and built the website, our visual identity was created and continues to be steered by Kerry Leslie. Marie Kreft writes most of our words. Kerry and Marie are both part of the BCM team.

Photographers Nicola Gotts and Nikki Cooper have taken pictures at our events, which feature in various places around the new BCM website. We plan to create a contributors page soon to give permanent credits to them.

Your feedback is valuable

Now you’ve found it, we’d love you to explore the new BCM website. Tell us what you like – and what doesn’t work so well. Your feedback will be so valuable as we continue to add resources and posts in the coming weeks.

Finally, if BCM has ever helped your small Birmingham community organisation, we’d love to feature your story with a case study. It helps us to show BCM’s impact (which is vital in securing funding and continuing our services). And we’d love to give your group a boost too by sharing your successes.

Whatever you’d like to tell us about the new BCM website, we’d be happy to hear from you! Contact the BCM team today.