‘Boston – The Small Town with a Big Story’ Goes Live!

After a yearlong process the ‘Boston – The Small Town with a Big Story’ website is now live. Boston College’s Digital Technologies Learners have spent the last couple of months designing and building the website to bring the local heritage book to a digital audience.

‘Boston – The Small Town with a Big Story’ is the idea of Boston Borough Councillor, Richard Austin, who felt there has never been a book covering the entire history of the town. The book covers 55 individual topics and was written by a team of contributors.

Back in September 2021, the authors of the book approached the College’s Digital Technologies Department to see if the learners would be interested in working on a live brief to build a website version of the book. The learners split into groups to start working on the brief and created concept designs, with the top four being selected to go forward to a judging panel, that took place at the Boston Guildhall Museum. The judging panels consisted of Cllr Richard Austin, Editor David Radford, and Michelle Sacks, Deputy Chief Exec of Boston Borough Council.

After the panel provided their feedback, the learners entered the final build stage for the chosen concept design. Each learner was provided with a topic for the book and had to build the relevant webpage for the site.

The build took around four months, and after all the learners’ hard-work and dedication, the website went live today (Tuesday 13th December) in front of members of Boston College, Boston Borough Council, History of Boston Project, and Lincolnshire County Council, in the College’s University Centre.

Speaking of the project, the College’s Digital Technologies Department said, “The Level 3 learners have been plunged into a challenging yet rewarding project that gives them first-hand experience working with clients to build a website that represents the history of Boston. Due to the pandemic, at the start of the project, some of the learners had minimal experience of website development, but have worked to the highest professional standard, gaining both valuable academic skills and industry experience that they should be proud to shout about.”

As well as gaining real-life work experience, each learner was kindly gifted a copy of the book.

For more information on the Digital Technologies Courses at Boston College, please visit our Digital Technologies course page, or to see the learners’ amazing work visit https://bostonstory.co.uk