How can I give clients more freedom to easily edit/add content?

My goal is to be able to help out performers I know who are on simple wordpress sites with something better.  But this is something I plan to do on the cheap to help them out so I need a system to let them do their own updates.  As of right now in the basic editor they can change around the text and make small edits but little else, and then there's the one in BC itself but that can become a real mess with some muse code and some of these people aren't that tech savvy.  So my goal would be something for them to easily be able to update events/put in photos, maybe a widget going to another service that I could style to fit the site?

Any ideas?