Written by Alex Dentith, Senior Marketing Manager at Dance City

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About Dance City

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Established in 1985, Dance City is one of the North East’s leading centres for contemporary dance. Offering public dance classes, a degree programme and a theatre venue to showcase performances from emerging artists and world-renowned dance companies, Dance City’s mission is to bring dance to everybody.

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At Dance City, we’re always looking to upskill, and digital is a major channel for us to help us reach a wide audience. Our executive director pointed me in the direction of Digital Pathfinders, and once I read up on the organisation and the support on offer, I knew I wanted to get involved.

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About the Support

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I had an initial chat with the Digital Pathfinders team, talking them through our business and asking about the courses available. They explained the full scope of support they offer, and gave me details on an upcoming course on Website Building Made Easy.

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As soon as I joined the course, I found it hugely helpful. It was great to be mixing with other local businesses across a range of industries, hearing about their different experiences, perspectives and thinking processes.

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That was especially helpful when part of the course got us thinking about our audiences; at Dance City, we aim to reach a wide range of audiences, so being able to hear from other businesses on how they understood their audiences, combined with the course content on audience research and how different users engage with websites, was instantly beneficial to us.

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What I particularly loved about the session was how the unique needs of each business was built in. Everything we were taught and guided through on the day included the flexibility to apply those learnings to the individual circumstances of each business in the room. Everyone was truly listened to, and Digital Pathfinders took the time to work through the problems, questions and ideas we all had.

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That friendly, open environment meant that you could ask the trainer – and each other – questions, making it a very collaborative space where we were all exchanging ideas and learning from that.

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It’s that combination of practical training, advice and knowledge sharing that makes Digital Pathfinders sessions so special. We were immediately able to apply what we’d learnt to our processes and approach as a business.

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For example, we have a lot of different users on our website, so when we’re looking at building content and mapping out our website, we can apply what we’ve learnt through Digital Pathfinders to make sure we’re meeting audience need.

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I’m now working on a separate project to relaunch and rebrand our café, which will include a separate website. The website building advice I received on the Website Building Made Easy course has been so useful, especially when thinking about those practical considerations.

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It’s empowering to know that I can create that website myself with my team here at Dance City, rolling it out in a low-cost and relatively easy way. Ultimately, it’s made us more efficient as a business, particularly as we now don’t have to spend money hiring a web agency.

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The training and events that Digital Pathfinders provide are definitely worth attending. The learnings we’ve been able to take away from the Website Building Made Easy course have been very helpful for our business, and given us plenty to implement moving forward.

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It’s also been great to get to know other businesses in the region, who I still keep in touch with. I’ve built my own network through the course, and swapped ideas and learnt from people that I otherwise might not have got chance to meet.

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Get Involved

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If you would like to learn more about the Digital Pathfinders programme and how our Digital Adoption Specialists can help your organisation, please get in touch at: hello@digitalpathfinders.uk

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