Mission 44

Mission 44 was founded by Sir Lewis Hamilton to drive change for young people who face the greatest barriers in education and employment. It operates at national scale, works with government, and carries the scrutiny that comes with a high-profile founder. The digital platform has to reflect all of that.

We rebuilt the Mission 44 website from the ground up – migrating from an existing Squarespace site to a bespoke WordPress build that could properly support the charity’s growing communications needs, its grantmaking and impact reporting, and an expanding programme of partnerships and campaigns. The site needed to feel authoritative and purposeful without being heavy – a platform for serious work, not just a brand exercise. Upwards Digital managed digital production with design and art direction from Studio Stromberg, and copywriting from Kristina Kitchen.

From there the relationship grew into a retained partnership covering ongoing development, site management and data work – the kind of arrangement where we’re embedded enough to move quickly when the organisation needs to.

A significant strand of that work has been Preventing Exclusions – a standalone campaign site built to a design by global agency AKQA. The campaign tackles record levels of school exclusions in England, making the case for systemic, preventative change through policy recommendations, research and coalition-building. Our job was to take AKQA’s design and build something that did it justice technically: performant, accessible and built to carry a serious public-facing campaign. The site lives under the Mission 44 umbrella but operates as its own distinct presence, and has been a key part of the charity’s advocacy work with policymakers and the education sector.