Barnsley creative health lead

Closing date: 5pm, Friday 28th February 2025

Salary: £36,750 pro rata, 0.6FTE (3 days per week) 

Length of appointment: 1 year from April 2025; with a likely extension to March 2027.

Hours of work: This is a three-day per week role, or 22.5 hours per week. We’re happy to explore flexible working arrangements.

You can listen to this information as an audio file or download as a PDF.

Bring diverse voices together to unlock the full potential of creative health across Barnsley’s communities.

CHWA is the national membership organisation for creative health. We use the term “creative health” to mean any arts or cultural activity that supports health or wellbeing. Our main roles as an organisation are: advocating for creative health, convening and supporting networks for creative and cultural workers and partners in health and social care, and building resources to help make this work more possible. We don’t provide creative activities that support health and wellbeing ourselves – instead we support the people who do.

This post is a key part of our work as an Investment Principles Support Organisation (IPSO) funded by Arts Council England from 2023-6. The role will focus specifically on creative health across the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley, South Yorkshire. 

The postholder will work to understand what is already working well for creative health and where the barriers lie; and to work with partners across VCSE, health and social care systems to design and implement solutions. 

Working with key partners at Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, we have already undertaken a lot of groundwork to build a successful Creative Health Partnership Group – whose members represent health, social care, cultural and creative practice and lived experience. 

The postholder will be tasked with maintaining and developing this group; and scoping and developing models for commissioning, investment and practice across the Metropolitan Borough. The role will be line-managed by our South Yorkshire Creative Health Lead and will feed directly into wider work across South Yorkshire’s health, social care, culture and community sectors.

Crucially, this role must be rooted in the principles outlined in the Creative Health Quality Framework – any positive change we make will be down to trust and solidarity across a wide range of stakeholders, and this depends on working in a way that priorities these principles: 

Key duties

The role is primarily focused on developing the infrastructure and workforce for creative health across the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley. It draws on a Creative Health Plan on a Page developed by a project team led by Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council in 2022-3. 

The postholder will:

• Convene and co-chair the Barnsley Creative Health Partnership Group

With the co-chair, they are responsible for:

• Maintaining the group’s Terms of Reference
  • ensuring the group is as diverse and representative as possible
  • ensuring the group includes key partners, grassroots organisations and people with lived experience
• Secure funding for and manage programmes to support the aims determined by this Group – previously this has included training, or events for Creativity & Wellbeing Week, for example (see November 2024 creative health plan) 
• Develop relationships with broader community, voluntary and faith sector across the metropolitan borough including through Barnsley CVS 
• Map existing commissioning processes and networks for creative health across the borough 
• Develop ways for creative and cultural workers to come together and collaborate, to strengthen their relationship with health and care partners 
• Support Barnsley’s contribution to Creativity & Week (annually, in May) 
• Attend and contribute to the South Yorkshire Creative Health Board
• Present their work to local, regional and occasionally national groups 
• Work with the partnership to evaluate the impact of this role and the creative health plan

Fundraising 

• Funding is in place for this role until March 2026; this is likely to extend to March 2027. CHWA will work with the postholder to investigate options to support the same role or equivalent support beyond this point; and to bring in additional funding to support local work. 

Key reference documents 

• Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council’s Plan on a Page 
• Creative Health Partnership Group plan (November 2024) 

Knowledge, skills and experience

Essential

• Good communication skills and diplomacy 
• Experience of working with a wide range of people and groups with a variety of professional and lived experiences 
• Experience of coproduction 
• Optimism and lateral thinking – willingness to use imaginative new approaches to strategy
• Knowledge and/or experience of working with creative health (we use “creative health” to mean any arts or cultural sector activity that supports health or wellbeing)
• Experience of working at a strategic level 
• Experience managing budgets 

If you have any of the following experience we would like to hear about it:

• Work with people with lived experience of health issues 
• Work with local authorities and / or health or care institutions 
• Work with large cultural institutions
• Work with small grassroots community organisations
• Experience of fundraising 

We are interested in hearing about transferable skills as well as direct experience of any of the above. 

Additional information

The postholder will be paid monthly by BACS. CHWA will be responsible for paying Tax and NI when due. The postholder will be enrolled in the Nest pension scheme (with the option to opt out). 

CHWA doesn’t have an office, but we would expect a proportion of your time to be spent in Barnsley working with local stakeholders. A desk space will be made available by our partners, Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, when you need a local space to work; and we are able to use meeting rooms across Barnsley for the Partnership Group and other meetings. There are also likely to be some offsite meetings with partners across South Yorkshire. 

CHWA will reimburse reasonable travel and subsistence expenses on the basis of agreement prior to travel. 

Access 

We are ready to adapt our working processes in discussion with applicants; please let us know about any access needs we can support.

How to apply

We would like to receive a CV and covering information explaining why you think you would be suitable for the role, referring to the Key Duties and Person Specification outlined above. Your covering information can be submitted as an email, an audio recording or a video recording as you prefer. We would prefer a written CV, but if this is not possible for any reason, please let us know and we can adapt accordingly.

Please tell us about any access needs we can meet to support your application process. We’d also appreciate it if you could click on this link and fill out this Equality, Diversity & Representation form when you apply. This form is anonymous and we won’t be able to connect it with your application, but it helps us assess whether we are reaching a wide pool of candidates. If the link doesn’t work for you let us know and we will find an alternative.

When you apply, please let us know whether you would be able to attend an interview in person during the week of 24 March, in Barnsley. 

We are committed to ensuring our organisation is as diverse and representative as possible and are using the IncArts Unlock tool to support this recruitment process. We particularly want to encourage applications from people identifying with any of the protected characteristics as defined in the 2010 Equality Act, or who are from less affluent socioeconomic backgrounds. 

If you want to contact us beforehand to arrange an information conversation, please email rachel@culturehealthandwellbeing.org.uk 

Timeline

Please send us your application by 5pm on Friday 28 February 2025. We will let you know of our decision by mid-March and we will aim to hold interviews in person, during the week of 24 March 2025.

Interviews will be for around an hour. We will send plans for the interview including any questions in advance, and let you know who will be on the interview panel before we meet you. 

Please state in your application that you found this role through Creative Access.