National Black Theater in Harlem has a rich legacy in uplifting the African American cultural identity. Since its founding in 1968, NBT has been amplifying intersectional stories of Black life as the country’s first revenue-generating Black art complex as the longest continually run Black theater in New York City, and one of the oldest theaters founded and consistently operated by a woman of color—Dr. Barbara Ann Teer—in the nation.
Up until recently, NBT’s digital presence far from adequately reflected these accolades or the theater’s importance as a cultural institution in New York and beyond. But after working with Noami Usher of her eponymous Studio Usher in concert with a brand refresh with Isometric and in partnership with Digital Citizen, National Black Theater got the new website it needed and deserved.
Below, NBT’s Executive Artistic Director Jonathan McCrory reflects on the development of the institution’s new website, and how this new digital presence honors and elevates its mission.
(Conversation lightly edited for length and clarity.)
What does this new website say about NBT?
The new website says that we are here and we are a national home. It shows that we are available, present, imaginative, and thinking about the future. It shares the cultural community that we are a part of and how we are a community center for culture to be birthed from.
The new website is a calling card— one that allows old and new family members to get to know NBT in a richer, fuller, and more interactive way. It’s a way for us to radio out who we are, and a way for folks to begin to understand the legacy and social impact work NBT has done and will continue to do. We are not simply a theater meant for transactional relationships— we work to have transformational ones. It’s quite powerful to think about how this website will grow with us over time as an added member of the team.
What were the team’s main goals for this new website? What was the project’s overarching mission?
The main goals of the new website were to create a fun, urban-chic reflection of Harlem, the National Black Theatre (NBT), and the Black arts and culture movement. We wanted to capture the legacy and future-forward innovation that NBT has and will continue to steward, especially with the growth of the organization through the rebuilding of our physical home in Harlem, NY.
We needed our digital home to be able to invite people to fully understand more of who we are and where we’ve come from, and provide the opportunity to engage with our future. Thanks to the generous support of Bloomberg Philanthropy’s Digital Accelerator Program, we at National Black Theatre were awarded the tools to dream and build a website that we could grow with.
This was further amplified through the major capital redevelopment project NBT has embarked upon, which is radically transforming our current home into a new state-of-the-art building. Moving out of our physical space to help make this happen, NBT has had to work outside of our historic home since 2020 and launch a public-facing digital program called NBT Beyond Walls. This program has been in need of a robust virtual home that was reflective of our vision for the “theatre of the future.” As the new facility continues to be constructed (slated through 2026), the new website becomes the singular landing space for us to connect with the community and showcase our values and our work, celebrate our legacy, and amplify the significant brand IP that we have cultivated for over 50 years.
Can you speak to any specific offerings on the new site that bring it to the next level in terms of function and user experience, as well as look and feel?
We surveyed the websites of our peers and wanted to generate something that would be reflective distinctively of NBT. Through the many conversations we had around our brand and how we can define it even further within the sector at large and amongst our peers within the Off-Broadway non-profit theatre world, we came up with a design that is continually adaptable, fun, clear, and interactive, with tools that will allow for the user to have an efficient yet informative experience.
With the work done by Studio Usher and Digital Citizen, National Black Theatre has been able to generate an interactive website that has intuitive navigation, responsive design, and comprehensive event information and allows us to truly reflect and represent the multifaceted verticals that NBT participates in. It was quite remarkable to collaborate with both Studio Usher and Digital Citizen because they allowed us to dream outside of the context of our standard practice and to make sure we amplified the unique attributes that make NBT a powerful, visual, and interactive digital space for folks to engage within. In addition, the new site eloquently displays the vast visual language that NBT is known for.
As the new facility continues to be constructed (slated through 2026), the new website becomes the singular landing space for us to connect with the community and showcase our values and our work, celebrate our legacy, and amplify the significant brand IP that we have cultivated for over 50 years.
What aspect of the new website are you proudest of?
What I’m most proud of is not what you visually see, but how we worked as a team in a pressurized setting to get the work done. Creating a site of this scale is no small feat, and takes tons of time, thought, and attention to detail. Reflecting on the process, this small yet mighty team embodied the slogan, “Teamwork makes the dream work.”
This website was made out of love and a true commitment to creating a beacon that would reflect the best values of the National Black Theatre in digital form. Our newly hired Director of Marketing and Communications, Nikki Vera, stepped into the middle of this process and partnered with me to see this through. Sade Lythcott, our steadfast CEO, kept checking our impulses to make sure the finalized design we were optimizing was future-forward thinking. The teams at Studio Usher and Digital Citizen blended together to create the best final product, while still addressing the questions we had so NBT could really be in the driver’s seat moving forward.
Lastly, I want to give a big thank you to Bloomberg Philanthropy’s Digital Accelerator Program consultant, Brenda Berliner, who was with us from day one of this process and gave us invaluable guidance through NBT’s first time doing such an expansive website revamp.
So, what I’m proudest of is the blending of functionality and soul. It embodies NBT’s energy and is soulful yet modern while remaining rooted in our rich history. The website feels welcoming, alive, and vibrant, and that would not have happened without the tribe that showed up to make sure that what you get to experience and what you get to click through is a reflective vibration of this institution.
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