Am is Wales’s bilingual website for creative and cultural sectors.
It connects independent artists, venues, festivals, community groups and national institutions through stories, events, a structured directory of organisations and straightforward ways to contribute.
For readers, it’s a simple place to discover what matters. For contributors, it’s a reliable home to publish in Welsh and English, increasing the visibility of work across Wales.
WHAT WE DID
Brand refinement
Large-scale content migration
Information architecture
User experience
Web design & development
WordPress CMS
Managed WordPress hosting
Bilingual functionality
Ongoing support
DESTINATION
Am needed a modern bilingual website to help people explore Wales’ cultural landscape. The site had to be accessible and intuitive, with straightforward navigation, meaningful search and filtering, and well-structured Welsh and English content. It also needed to support growing engagement from artists, organisations and stakeholders, with dependable editorial tools and an identity that feels distinctly Welsh.
THE JOURNEY
We refined Am’s visual identity and design system, reorganised the information architecture and navigation, and designed an accessible bilingual user experience that presents Welsh and English side by side. We built a flexible website on WordPress with structured content models, tagging, and meaningful filters to help people discover stories, events, and organisations. We safely migrated 13,700+ items, 693 organisation profiles, and 16,500 media assets with language mapping and fallbacks, simplified editorial workflows, and equipped the team to publish confidently as engagement grows.
The WordPress website can be viewed at www.ambobdim.cymru.
The homepage is composed of a number of key areas enabling users to explore content in various ways, and promote latest content, featured items and ‘advertise’ content in the prominent banner area.
Editors can choose featured items, tweak copy and update imagery in minutes, keeping the organisation’s public facing image current without disturbing the underlying structure.
“We treated Am as a holistic digital rethink, not just a cosmetic refresh. The goal was to offer a modern, easily accessible, bilingual user experience. We untangled years of legacy data, handled large amounts of visual content, and built custom WordPress tools that busy editors can trust. The resulting website supports discovery, participation and growth.”
Tom Tribe, Director, Design Tribe
The previous developers were only able to provide us with raw JSON data export and a media dump.
We assigned structured custom fields, mapped and normalised legacy data, reconciled historic images with new uploads, and kept rich media consistent by fetching thumbnails dynamically from trusted platforms such as Vimeo.
In total, nearly 14,000 items, nearly 700 organisation profiles and 16,000+ media assets were brought into WordPress without losing context.
We reshaped the site’s structural logic so visitors can more easily discover Stories or view Organisation Profiles. The homepage introduces these routes up front, then opens into curated sections that keep visitors moving without dead ends.
An A–Z browser makes it easy to jump straight to a name, while theme tags help people explore peers and collaborators.
Organisation profiles then surface the essentials at a glance: logo, short description, links to web and social, and a live archive of everything that organisation has contributed. The result is a living network of stakeholders, partners and contributors rather than a flat directory.
We tuned the visual system for digital use. An evolved palette anchored by the core ‘Am green’ meets contrast expectations, type and spacing are tightened for readability, and portrait styles on About were standardised for a coherent finish. A compact design system of tokens, components and content modules keeps things consistent while leaving room to grow.
Previously, Welsh and English often appeared on the same page, which made already rich pages feel crowded. We introduced mirrored Welsh and English layouts, a clear language switcher and sensible fallbacks where one language is still in progress. The result is an easily accessible bilingual experience where people can switch language without losing context and editors can keep both sides aligned.
Discovery goes beyond a single search box. A site-wide search sits in the main navigation, while the Discover hub presents compact cards tagged by theme such as art, dance and music, with format and date filters and simple sorting for quick scanning.
Public contribution and contact routes are straightforward, with conditional logic for Welsh, English or both. Submissions arrive with the right metadata so editors can review and publish without rework. Required fields and light inline guidance maintain consistency without slowing anyone down.
IMPACT
Modernising Am has given Wales’ cultural community a bilingual home that invites exploration and makes participation easier. Clear structure, meaningful search and well-governed Welsh and English content help people find stories, events and organisations, while dependable editorial tools let the team publish with confidence as engagement grows. The result feels distinctly Welsh, practical for busy contributors and ready to support the next chapter of culture across Wales.
Planning improvements to a public or third-sector website? Contact us and we’ll help you plan the right next steps.
