Some weeks ago I bumped into Ian Sanders who is the current Chairman of the Winsford Trust, a charitable organisation dedicated to the upkeep of a listed building situated near Halwill in Devon, in the UK. We met on a train travelling from Exeter to Paddington. I was on my way to the US and Ian was going to London to see a client.
During the conversation that ensued, I learned that Ian needed to find a way to update the Winsford Trust website, but no-one who worked for the charity had the technical skills to do it. Their existing website had been built free of charge by an experienced graphic designer from Bristol called Kevan Attridge. Kevan had created and designed the site and had been doing all the updates on it too. Having done all this free work for so long and having been so incredibly helpful to the Trust, I got the impression they didn’t like to keep asking him for continual changes to the site, knowing how busy he was.
I thought Ian incredibly personable so without thinking too much, I volunteered to take Kevan’s place and offered to build a new site for the Trust on WordPress and also teach one of their team to keep it maintained. That way, after an initial flurry of activity, they should become more or less self-sufficient.
Ian seemed to think this was a workable idea especially as it turned out that we lived close by. So we arranged a meeting to take place when I got back from America.
Russell and I attended the meeting with Ian, Ray and Daniella from the Winsford Trust during which they explained their ideas for the site. It was all quite ambitious, but I thought why not? Russell was also enthusiastic to help as they were all so passionate about CFA Voysey and his architectural accomplishments at the Winsford Cottage Hospital, which is what the Winsford Trust is all about.
As a result of discussions that followed, Russell and I agreed to do the work for the Trust free of charge, and I got agreement from Ian that I could document the journey here as a Case Study.