Clayton Youth Enrichment
Clayton Youth Curriculum
How 1558 Brand Agency Partnered with Clayton Youth Enrichment to Develop a Proprietary Curriculum
The Client
Clayton Youth Enrichment is Tarrant County’s largest single provider of onsite after-school care, serving more than 5,000 students across 60 public and private schools. Founded in 1975, Clayton has been a staple in the Fort Worth community, providing a safe and enriching place for children to go before and after school while their parents are working. In addition to childcare, Clayton offers a dynamic curriculum that teaches students essential life skills to foster their social, emotional, and educational development.
The Challenge
As students continued to thrive with Clayton’s curriculum, the team realized they had an opportunity to share what they were doing with other childcare organizations. However, while all of Clayton’s original curriculum was developed in-house, over time content pieces, activities, and tools were pulled from other resources. Although these additions were useful, the team knew they would need to create a completely original curriculum if they wanted to provide the most value to other organizations and open the door for grant opportunities. With this in mind, they developed a plan to overhaul their existing content and develop an enhanced curriculum that was proprietary and authentic to Clayton, complete with original learning tools, graphics, and activities.
The project began in 2019, but as with many things, the pandemic forced Clayton to shift its priorities. Rather than rewrite the entire curriculum, they focused primarily on writing smaller activity kits. Once normal operations resumed in 2022, Clayton was able to rededicate the time and resources that the project required. However, with an internal staff that was at capacity and a project scope that continued to grow, it was clear that Clayton would need outside support to achieve its goals.
Based on previous work together, Clayton brought 1558 Brand Agency in for the project. While Clayton originally enlisted 1558 to simply support the staff by reviewing rewritten lessons and units, 1558’s dedication to client success, experienced marketing team, and creative vision soon enabled them to become a much more integral partner.
The Strategy
After being asked to rewrite one lesson, Clayton was confident that 1558 would make a great partner in transforming Clayton’s curriculum into a proprietary essential life skills training program. By choosing to work with 1558 on the project, Clayton was able to maximize the resources and time of their personnel. 1558 had the ability to recruit and commission skilled curriculum writers to focus on the project, which was much more efficient for Clayton than hiring a team of full-time writers.
Across all the rewritten lessons, 1558 writers continued to build on the model that Clayton started. They scrubbed the content of anything that was borrowed, wrote original content, and cleaned up existing curriculum so that it aligned with Clayton’s goals. In addition to writers, 1558 brought in quality graphic design artists to create custom logos and artwork for each lesson. This allowed Clayton to have a finished product that was not only beautifully written, but also visually engaging.
The Results
After successfully finishing the first unit and getting approval from Clayton, 1558 was commissioned to rewrite three years’ worth of curriculum. Each year would contain five units, for a total of 15 units across three years.
The project has been a fruitful partnership, with commitment to client success, consistency, and strategic marketing and branding at the forefront of every project.
1558 delivered the 15th and final curriculum book in May 2024, enabling Clayton to fulfill their goal of sharing their curriculum with other childcare organizations and equipping more children with the tools to thrive.
The flexibility and one-on-one attention provided by 1558 brand agency has helped us be able to navigate the sometimes unpredictable nature of funding streams and challenges brought on by unforeseen circumstances. Their ability to change and adapt quickly to our needs has been one of the keys to our success with our current project. We would highly recommend them to potential clients looking for a partner in managing their needs, in our space especially.