In 2023, the Fitzwilliam held the Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance exhibition to reflect on the museum’s connection to the transatlantic slave trade and to ask whose stories were being told through its art collection. The ‘Rise Up’ exhibition in 2025 was a follow-up to Black Atlantic and a continuation of the project.
To keep the stories of Black Atlantic and Rise Up alive, and with the aim of creating a fairer future for black artists, the museum created the Future Legacies website.
We originally took on this site from an instance of WP Engine it had been built in. Our designer worked his magic on the design and I was tasked with building it in WordPress.
Having recently taken the Complete CSS course by Piccalilli, my approach to this project was a little different than previous projects. I put together a FigJam, breaking down each of the components on the site, and getting all of my thoughts down as I went through the design. I found this approach immensely helpful, as someone with ADHD, I was able to just get down all of my thoughts on 'paper' and consolidate them in one place. It also meant I was able to more easily have a back-and-forth with the designer with any questions I had by giving him the link to the FigJam and giving him a glimpse into my brain.
This also helped with other parts of the project, with our in-house accessibility expert being able to highlight potential accessibility issues before the site was fully built, which made it easy for things like the video in the hero, and the toggle-able search component to be as accessible as possible from the get-go.