Empowering Edinburgh’s Cultural Experience.
We partnered with the City of Edinburgh Council to design and deliver a single, unified digital platform for its diverse cultural venues and museums, streamlining operations, enhancing access, and unlocking new revenue potential.
Client
Edinburgh Council
Sector
Retail
Product
Web app
Year
2025
Disconnected Digital Journeys.
The City of Edinburgh Council’s Culture and Wellbeing service manages some of the city’s most iconic cultural destinations, from Usher Hall and the Assembly Rooms to the City Art Centre. Until recently, however, the digital experience was fragmented across five separate websites, leading to inconsistencies in user experience, duplicated content efforts, and missed opportunities for cross-promotion. With limited internal capacity and growing ambitions for audience growth and revenue, the Council needed a streamlined platform that would improve engagement, reduce operational complexity, and prepare the service for future expansion, including multilingual support and digital donation tools.
Key challenges included:
- Inconsistent design and UX across individual venue websites.
- Inefficient publishing workflows for a small comms team.
- Missed opportunities for unified marketing and data capture.
4.98m
Overnight Trips
£2,244m
Tourism Spend
16
Cultural assets
A Centralised Platform for Cultural Reach.
Working closely with the City of Edinburgh Council, we designed a scalable, future-ready platform that unifies events, venues, museums, and services into a single digital destination. The existing Drupal sites were replaced with a new build on Payload CMS, chosen for its performance, flexibility, and ease of use for a small internal team. We implemented seamless Spektrix integration across all cultural venues, ensuring a consistent and intuitive ticketing experience while keeping users on-site during booking journeys.
User journeys were carefully crafted with rich filtering and “What’s On” views, allowing visitors to easily explore events by venue, category, or date. The platform was built with modular components to support dynamic content across news, exhibitions, and services. Accessibility remained a top priority throughout, with design and build aligned to WCAG 2.2 guidelines around contrast, layout, and navigation. Behind the scenes, role-based access controls streamline content publishing, while features like donation flows, mailing list capture, and rebuilt venue pages support the Council’s goals for discoverability, engagement, and long-term SEO performance.
A Centralised Platform for Cultural Reach.
Working closely with the City of Edinburgh Council, we designed a scalable, future-ready platform that unifies events, venues, museums, and services into a single digital destination. The existing Drupal sites were replaced with a new build on Payload CMS, chosen for its performance, flexibility, and ease of use for a small internal team. We implemented seamless Spektrix integration across all cultural venues, ensuring a consistent and intuitive ticketing experience while keeping users on-site during booking journeys.
User journeys were carefully crafted with rich filtering and “What’s On” views, allowing visitors to easily explore events by venue, category, or date. The platform was built with modular components to support dynamic content across news, exhibitions, and services. Accessibility remained a top priority throughout, with design and build aligned to WCAG 2.2 guidelines around contrast, layout, and navigation. Behind the scenes, role-based access controls streamline content publishing, while features like donation flows, mailing list capture, and rebuilt venue pages support the Council’s goals for discoverability, engagement, and long-term SEO performance.
Success for Culture Edinburgh?.
The result is a single, intuitive platform that strengthens the Council’s brand, improves user engagement, and simplifies day-to-day management.
Outcomes include:
- Unified web presence across venues, museums, and monuments
- Simplified ticketing and user login via Spektrix
- Improved accessibility and support for multilingual expansion
- Increased visibility of events, exhibitions, and donation opportunities
- Performance-tested architecture for peak-time booking
- CMS structured to support a small internal comms team
- Clear reporting and analytics integration for campaign tracking
Culture Edinburgh.
- Spektrix integration for ticketing, vouchers, and donations
- Component-based design system for flexible page building
- Personalised user accounts and mailing preferences
- Clear “Venue Hire” pathways and contact flows
- Embedded video content
- Structured archives for exhibitions and past events
- Museum landing pages with smart filtering.
- WCAG 2.2 adherence.
Testimonial.
"This was one of those projects where everyone brought their A-game. From brand development with Andy and Jake to UX and site architecture with Michael, each specialist had space to focus where it mattered most. We worked closely with the Council to retain the authenticity of each venue, especially ensuring well-known names like Usher Hall weren’t overshadowed in the new unified platform. Wireframing was a real highlight for us; it helped break down complexity and guide stakeholders through the process in a way that felt collaborative and empowering. Seeing the venues in person added a layer of understanding you just don’t get remotely. Balancing music, museums, and theatre in one cohesive system wasn’t easy, but the result is something we’re genuinely proud of."
Arch Design Team
