The Carr Fenton Foundation
Repositioning a historic deaf education trust for a broader future – without losing its identity.
The challenge we faced
The Carr Fenton Foundation (formerly Doncaster Deaf Trust) is a long-established charity providing specialist education, care and employability support. With a history spanning nearly 200 years, the organisation supports deaf and SEND learners across multiple services, including a nursery, school, college, care homes and employability programmes.
The organisation faced a complex balancing act. It needed a new name and identity that reflected its status as a modern, national charity, while also honouring its deep roots in deaf education. The existing brand no longer captured the full breadth of its work, with deaf education representing only part of its excellent provision. At the same time, removing the word “deaf” risked alienating the very community it was founded to serve.
Internally, the organisation operated across multiple services, often feeling fragmented. The challenge was to create a single, cohesive identity that brought everything together while ensuring every stakeholder – from staff to students to the Deaf community as a whole – felt seen and respected. The website added another layer of complexity: effectively five websites in one, it needed to be accessible, easy to navigate and work for a wide range of users, including those with additional needs.
Working with designer Natalie Morton and developer John Puddephatt of Let’s Dance, we handled the full rebrand and website redevelopment – covering brand strategy, stakeholder engagement, naming, tone of voice and all website content.
How we helped them
• Held in-person stakeholder engagement sessions with staff, students, pupils, teachers, and members of the Deaf community, using interpreters to ensure full participation.
• Designed visual, inclusive workshop activities to gather meaningful input across different communication needs.
• Carefully balanced perspectives – ensuring Deaf voices were central, particularly in sensitive decisions around naming and identity.
• Synthesised findings into a strategic report, forming the foundation for brand values, tone of voice and positioning.
• Led the renaming process for both the parent organisation (The Carr Fenton Foundation) and the college (Yorkshire Rose College), including naming routes and stakeholder voting.
• Developed a clear content architecture and wrote all website copy, simplifying complex structures into a cohesive, accessible user journey.
• Collaborated with a designer and developer to deliver a unified brand and a fully accessible website experience.
The impact we made
The new names for both the Foundation and the college were universally supported, with strong internal buy-in across the organisation and stakeholders feeling represented by a cohesive, single identity.
The new brand values were particularly well received, clearly capturing the organisation’s purpose and ethos, and bringing all five services together under the banner of ‘united and connected’.
The new website and visual identity were positively received, providing a clearer, more confident external presence. The organisation is now much better positioned as both a charity and a national leader in specialist education and support.
What they said
Thank you so much for helping us usher in this new era for our organisation. It was a huge undertaking with many people involved, but we're so happy with our brand values, tone of voice, and our new look and feel, not to mention our amazing website. You've captured who we are and we couldn’t be more pleased. We’re really glad we sent you the brief!