Street culture meets digital clarity
C’est la Vie is one of the Netherlands’ most vibrant free street festivals—held annually in the heart of Emmen. Every July, the city centre transforms into a buzzing mix of theatre, live music, local market stalls, and public performances. With thousands of visitors attending each year, the event needed more than just a promotional flyer online, it needed a proper digital platform.
I had the opportunity to join the team at Webba, a creative firm based in the Netherlands and one of the event’s main sponsors. They brought me in to assist with both the UX/UI and technical development of the new site, especially around creating structured, editable systems for the event programme.
Content-led and people-friendly
The website serves one clear purpose: promote the festival and guide visitors through the experience. Part news platform, part event schedule, and part archive, the site needed to be easily updatable year after year, without technical barriers or plugin dependencies.
The core structure is blog-like, but we added specific modules for things like:
- The full programme page, allowing events to be added in the backend with time stamps and ordered dynamically by schedule
- News posts and announcements, managed like regular blog content
- Accessible mobile layouts, designed for visitors navigating on the day of the event
My biggest challenge: not technical, but linguistic
Joining an all-Dutch team as a non-Dutch speaker was its own learning curve. Most meetings, chats, and task boards were conducted in Dutch. But the team at Webba went out of their way to make it work. They paused to translate key points, helped clarify briefs, and made sure I felt like part of the team from day one.
It was a solid reminder that great collaboration isn’t just about shared tools, it’s about shared intent.
Smart backend, smooth frontend
One of my core contributions was building the programme section. The goal was simple: make it easy for the editor to enter events, assign a time, and have them appear in the correct order automatically. This way, the page can be reused each year with zero restructuring. Just plug in the new acts, update the date, and publish.
I built the system using native WordPress functionality combined with carefully structured fields, no over-complication, just good design logic. The result is a clean, future-proof system that works just as well for small updates as it does for full schedule rebuilds.
A modern facelift
The old site was showing its age. Webba’s redesign brought in a fresh, engaging look with bold headlines, full-width visuals, and intuitive navigation. I supported the team on translating that design into flexible layouts, ensuring it worked equally well on desktop and mobile.
And best of all, the client was thrilled. The organisers finally had a site that matched the energy of their event, modern, easy to manage, and built for visibility.
What made this special
It wasn’t a massive technical project. It didn’t involve complex APIs or third-party integrations. But it was a human project, cross-border, cross-language, and built for real people to use.
For me, it was a chance to prove that good development isn’t just about writing code. It’s about adapting, collaborating, and building things that last.
C’est la Vie is more than just a festival. And now, its website feels like more than just a page.