First Fortnight website design and development and photography

Challenging mental health stigma

First Fortnight is a prominent Irish mental health charity that challenges societal prejudice and stigma through arts and cultural action. Supported as an innovative project awardee under Rethink Ireland's three-year, €3M HeadStart Fund (in collaboration with the Z Zurich Foundation and the HSE), the organisation runs a highly anticipated annual festival every January across Ireland. Crucially, they also operate a year-round Centre for Creative Therapies, employing IACAT-accredited therapists to deliver free, trauma-informed art, music, and drama therapies to children, adolescents, and adults experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

The dignity of anonymous design

The organisation was up against a critical architectural bottleneck: the legacy digital setup put all the spotlight on the annual festival, leaving their vital, year-round creative arts therapy services hidden away or secondary. Additionally, while the public festival offered a load of lively event imagery, using photos for the therapeutic side of things was naturally very limited. First Fortnight deals with people in highly vulnerable situations and we focused on finding ways to communicate the life-changing impact of these free therapies while completely respecting the anonymity of the clients and presenting their journeys with proper dignity and care.

Authentic photography that builds trust

To navigate these sensitive privacy constraints without losing human connection, we established a photography strategy that entirely avoids clinical, corporate, or stock imagery. Instead, we produced highly authentic, professional photography of the First Fortnight team, the dedicated therapists, and the safe, welcoming spaces where the therapies take place. 

Animated storytelling beyond the screen

Custom animation became a powerful storytelling tool, helping us communicate how creative therapies support, heal and restore mental health. Through a simple visual language of illustration, movement and texture, the animations communicate the emotional impact of creative therapies in a way that is both engaging and respectful, extending First Fortnight’s storytelling across digital, social and offline channels.

Unifying culture and healthcare

We saw an opportunity to leverage an "Atomic Design" approach to create a flexible, deeply integrated structural strategy. We kept the festival and the clinical therapy wings linked together with an intuitive, user-centric architecture. By implementing a clever homepage structure that shifts gears naturally depending on the time of year, we allowed the platform to act as a seasonal box-office hub during peak winter, and seamlessly morph into an impactful, illustration-driven healthcare brochure and fundraising vehicle for the other ten months of the year.

Accessibility, referrals, and secure funding

We engineered a modern WordPress platform featuring an interactive event calendar filterable by date, type, and location, complete with embedded ticketing links. We deployed custom, streamlined referral pathways and specialised secure forms for both adults and youth, paired with a persistent "Donate" call-to-action layer integrated directly with Stripe to process recurring donations efficiently.

Sustain your social purpose

The resulting platform gives funders, partners, and the public a deep understanding of First Fortnight's true societal impact. It balances complex public entertainment listings with sensitive healthcare resource delivery, securing a sustainable future for their therapeutic services. 

If your organisation needs to communicate a multi-faceted mission, build trust with donors, and transform tricky privacy requirements into an elite user experience, contact Piquant to spark change today.