When a mission-driven media lab loses its creative memory, metadata becomes the bridge back to purpose.

📘 Context

EchoFrame Media, a small nonprofit storytelling lab, had grown faster than its systems.

Years of projects—films, podcasts, and social campaigns—sat scattered across drives and cloud folders.

The organization’s archive wasn’t just fragmented; it had forgotten itself.

No one knew which assets belonged to which campaign, or how to retrieve past work for grants or training.

This was more than a technical problem—it was a loss of creative continuity.

⚙️ Intervention

The solution began with empathy, not software.

Through team interviews and content mapping, we uncovered how each group thought about their work.

Editors sorted by story arc, fundraisers by impact theme, and interns by file date.

That insight shaped a lightweight metadata framework built on shared language rather than imposed taxonomy.

We implemented:

• A Metadata Entry Template drawn from the Metadata Strategy Toolkit, customized for the lab’s content types.
• A three-tier taxonomy: Project → Asset Type → Theme.
• Governance checkpoints every two weeks, focusing on education instead of enforcement.

<aside>

💡 The key principle: teach structure as storytelling, not compliance.

</aside>