The Carr Fenton Foundation
Repositioning a historic deaf education trust for a broader future – without losing its identity.
The challenge 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.
As part of a full rebrand and website redevelopment project, I was brought in by Let's Dance Agency to deliver brand strategy, stakeholder engagement, naming, tone of voice and website content.
How I helped
• As a member of the Let's Dance team, I held in-person stakeholder engagement sessions with staff, students, pupils, teachers, and members of the Deaf community, using interpreters to ensure full participation.
• I co-produced 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.
• Worked with John to synthesise our findings into a strategic report, forming the foundation for brand values, tone of voice and positioning.
• Led on the renaming process for both the parent organisation (The Carr Fenton Foundation) and the college (Yorkshire Rose College), including naming routes and stakeholder voting.
• Conducated a full website audit of their old site, mapped out a clear content architecture for their new one, and wrote all website copy, simplifying complex structures into a cohesive, accessible user journey across five distinct services and the parent organisation.
• Supported Let's Dance to deliver a unified brand and a fully accessible website experience.
The impact 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 delievered by the Let's Dance team 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. We're so happy with our brand values and tone of voice, not to mention the new name for our college and our charity. You've captured who we are and we couldn’t be more pleased.