Creative health & equity lead

Application deadline: 10am on Monday 28 May

Salary: £37,853, pro-rated for 0.6FTE (3 days per week). This amounts to £22,712 per annum

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Help shape the future of creative health in Derbyshire in this role for a strategic and collaborative thinker.

This regional post is a key part of the Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance (CHWA)’s work as an Investment Principles Support Organisation (IPSO), funded by Arts Council England. It is one of a small number of regional roles managed by CHWA, designed to catalyse and support work in the North, Midlands and East of the country.

This role focuses primarily on creative health across Derbyshire, recognising the importance of working with ACE’s Priority Places and DCMS Levelling Up for Culture Places: North East Derbyshire, Chesterfield, Bolsover and Amber Valley. The postholder will also have a light-touch remit for advocacy and networking across the broader Midlands.

The post is about developing strategic and infrastructural support for an equitable creative health offer, rather than delivering projects. We want the postholder to bring together partners across Derbyshire to help us understand what the enablers and barriers to regional and local development are, and to develop and test systems that will make a positive difference. With committed support in place from local and national partners, this is an exciting opportunity to build on this momentum and create long-lasting change.

To support this role we work with a range of local partners, including Arts Derbyshire and the Public Health team in Derbyshire County Council. We anticipate relationships with partners will evolve over the course of this role.

The role is currently funded for one year, until the end of June 2026. We anticipate that we will be able to continue until at least the end of March 2027, however – we are currently awaiting formal confirmation of this extension funding from Arts Council England and will be able to confirm this in early May.

Key duties

There is a huge gap in terms of infrastructure support for creative health and we don’t expect to comprehensively meet this need with this role. This is an exploratory and developing role which we expect to evolve and change. Some core aspects are outlined below, however.

We’d like the postholder to:

• Prioritise a vision and plan for the coming one / two-year period that can guide developments
• Build on the work undertaken by the previous postholder to understand and map existing work, partnerships, commissioning processes and networks for creative health across Derbyshire
• Build relationships with county-wide systems, including Joined Up Care Derbyshire (the area’s Integrated Care System) and Derbyshire County Council
• Identify and act on opportunities to embed creative heath into strategic documents produced by these systems
• Help to develop regional groups that might support creative health, in consultation with partners. We might want to consider a strategic group for example, and/or a peer-to-peer practitioner group. Any groups should prioritise diversity, and engage with lived experience from the start.
• Consider the regional skills development and support needs for creative and cultural workers, prioritising diversity and health inequalities.
• Work with CHWA’s other regional leads (and other similar roles outside CHWA) to exchange ideas for developing this kind of regional work.
• Convene events and workshops, as required, ensuring diversity and representation of lived experience of long-term health needs.

Where possible we would like the postholder to engage with broader work across the Midlands, including with CHWA’s volunteer regional champions and partners at the National Centre for Creative Health.

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.

Evaluation

We want to understand the impact of this kind of strategic role. The postholder will work with our partners in the region to evaluate progress.

Fundraising

Funding is in place for this role until the end of June 2026 and is very likely to extend to March 2027. CHWA will work with the postholder to increase provision for and around this existing role.

Person specification

We always aim to be collaborative; caring; inclusive; and committed to positive social change. These are our values as an organisation and it’s essential you feel comfortable with this, and that you feel you can work in this way.

We also consider the following to be essential for this role, but we are always interested in hearing about transferable skills as well as direct experience.

• Experience of working with a wide range of people and groups with a variety of professional and lived experience, including people from underrepresented communities
• Experience of working to support equality, inclusion and diversity
• Experience of working at a strategic level
• Experience of coproduction: involving people with lived experience in equal partnership
• Diplomacy; good, proactive communication skills; flexibility; persistence and patience
• Optimism and lateral thinking
• Knowledge and/or experience of creative health
• 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 small grassroots community organisations
• Experience of fundraising

Contract

This is a one-year contract initially, running until the end of June 2026, with a likely extension to at least March 2027. 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).

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.

Place of work

CHWA doesn’t have an office so this role will be primarily remote, but the role is also likely to require fairly frequent face-to-face work meetings with colleagues across Derbyshire. Derbyshire is a large and largely rural area with limited public transport options. The postholder will need to spend some time travelling around the county. Being able to drive and having access to a car might be helpful; but it’s not a requirement.

Access

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

Salary & expenses

£37,853 per annum, pro-rated for 0.6FTE – this equates to £22,712 p.a. Salaries are reviewed annually. During the role, CHWA will reimburse reasonable travel and subsistence expenses on the basis of agreement prior to travel.

Start date

We are keen for the postholder to start as soon as possible, but understand that this will depend on your existing contracts and notice periods.

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 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.

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 believe diversity strengthens our organisation and drives innovation. We specifically encourage applications from individuals from under-represented communities including global majority, Gypsy, Roma, Traveller, Showmen and Boater (GRTSB), d/Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent (DDN), LGBTQIA+, or people who are from less affluent socio-economic backgrounds.

Please email your application to the email address found via the Apply button. If you’d like an informal conversation about the role before you apply, please email victoria@culturehealthandwellbeing.org.uk. When you apply, please let us know whether you would be able to attend an interview on 10 June, online.

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

Timeline

Please send us your application by 10am on Monday 28 May. We will let you know of our decision by Thursday 5 June and we plan to hold interviews online on 10 June 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.