Welcome to Our New Digital Home
This week, we’re taking a huge step forward by moving our content and programs to a new digital framework. Thanks to the incredible support from our partner collectives and hubs, we are adapting their original pilot program platform, which was built with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts. This new system is a modified WordPress Content Management System (CMS), and we’re excited to dive in and learn how to use it.
The new site for our page will be: https://artsincubator.ca/borupscorners
One of the biggest advantages of this new system is that we don’t have to start from scratch. Building a website can be incredibly time-consuming and expensive. By adapting an existing framework, we are saving immense time, effort, and money. This allows us to focus our energy on what truly matters: our community and our programs.
Working Smarter, Not Harder
The power of WordPress lies in its ability to streamline our administrative tasks, allowing us to work smarter, not harder. Let’s take something as simple as meeting minutes and agendas as an example. With our old, static website, someone had to manually update a new page for every single meeting, which was a slow and repetitive process. But with our new database-driven system, we can spend a couple of hours and schedule a whole year’s worth of agendas in advance!
And if something changes? No problem.
The beauty of a CMS is its flexibility. We can simply log into the dashboard, edit the post, and change the date or details in a matter of seconds. This reduces our administrative effort, giving us more time to focus on what we all want to be doing: creating, connecting, and building a stronger community.
Don’t Be Intimidated!
Learning a new system can feel overwhelming, but we don’t want anyone to feel that pressure. This is a learning journey for all of us. To help everyone get comfortable, we’ve set up a local server where you can go in and “press all the buttons” without worrying about breaking anything.
There are many sections and features to learn, and we’ll tackle them one at a time. This is a key part of our project, and that’s why we’ll be putting out more blog posts and photos—so we can all learn the tools as we go and gradually move on to more advanced activities.
Why Owning Our Platform is Crucial
Right now, much of our communication happens on social media platforms like Facebook, X, and LinkedIn. While useful, these platforms are not our own; they are someone else’s space, governed by their rules. The purpose of building out our own platform is to give us complete control over our message, our content, and our audience.
We can publish what we want, how we want, without being confined to another company’s terms of service or algorithms. This is a vital step toward building a strong, self-reliant, and self-determining brand for our collective—an online presence that truly belongs to us.
Join in and Take Part
We meet every Monday at 10:00 a.m. in-person and online. Saturday art and code sessions will take place on Saturdays at 10:00 a.m. starting next month! Contact Us for more information or how you can participate. All are welcome!
About the Author
