Venue duty manager

Closing date for applications: 30 September 2025

Salary: £30,000 per annum

Contract: 12-month fixed term contract

Step into a leadership role at the heart of a diverse visitor team. Shape unforgettable visitor experiences while managing the events, activities and daily operations of an exciting cultural venue.

The venue duty manager is a key role with our visitor team – it provides day-to-day duty management of the venue, events, and activities, contributes to creating an outstanding and inclusive visitor experience at Aviva Studios, and leads a diverse team on the ground that includes supervisors, hosts and volunteers. You’ll coordinate with a range of other teams including our food and drink, security and cleaning partners – as well as internal teams like ticketing, event management and producing. The duty management team are the operational leads in the venue – you’ll be proactive in ensuring visitor safety, responding to incidents and escalating issues as needed. Working across a rota – you’ll cover both building duty management shifts, as well as shifts managing the visitor-facing aspects of specific events and functions.

In a venue like Aviva Studios, no two events are the same, so our duty manager team also plays a role in planning for flexible and adaptable visitor experience. Behind the scenes you’ll also contribute to our management, rota-ing and communications with our host team.


Responsibilities

• Fulfil the role of duty manager in the operational structure of Aviva Studios, working with supervisors, and other teams in the day-to-day delivery of outstanding and inclusive customer service to all visitors
• Play a leading delivery and decision-making role in the day-to-day operation of Aviva Studios, this may include leading evacuations, completing risk assessments, managing crowd-flow, responding to first aid incidents, monitoring and maintaining the safety of visitors, colleagues and artworks, as well as incident response and management
• Oversee complex visitor operations – often including multiple events of scale taking place simultaneously
• Manage the visitor-facing teams at Aviva Studios. Depending on the day and type of event this may include directly briefing and managing hosts and volunteers, or leading a team who in turn manage hosts and volunteers
• Oversight and on the day management of key visitor-facing functions such as: retail, reception, security, cloakroom, ticket scanning, etc
• Work with producers and event managers to scope and plan operational needs for commercial and creative programming and events
• Work with the wider duty management team to embed a positive and proactive team culture
• Play a key role in developing, training and equipping supervisors, hosts and volunteers to contribute to the visitor experience offer at Aviva Studios
• Contribute to our management, rotas and communications with our host team
• Champion Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility, ensuring Aviva Studios provides a consistent experience to all visitors

Knowledge, skills and experience

Essential

• Ability to motivate and lead teams of people in the delivery of outstanding experiences/services
• Effective communication skills with the ability to communicate with a broad range of people from different backgrounds
• Demonstrable experience of taking a collaborative approach to their work
• Ability to remain calm under pressure, always retaining an open and approachable manner
• Familiarity with Health & Safety legislation and practical implementation of policies and procedures
• First Aid Qualification or willingness to undertake a First Aid Qualification
• Excellent organisational skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities effectively
• Commitment to championing representation and inclusion at every level of the organisation with a proven ability to work with people from a wide range of backgrounds
• Willing to undertake relevant statutory checks e.g. DBS (Factory International can support with processing and payment)

Desirable

• Previous experience of working within an arts/cultural venue or a customer focused organisation
• Understanding/knowledge of access needs and previous experience of working with access customers
• Previous experience of leading teams of people
• Good IT skills, including proficiency with Microsoft office programs and the ability to pick up systems quickly
• Enthusiasm for training, mentoring and support of emerging talent

Factory International is committed to equality for everyone and we encourage you to apply no matter what your age, caring responsibilities, disability, gender, gender identity, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief and sexual orientation. We are particularly committed to supporting applications from individuals with backgrounds or social groups that are currently underrepresented in the creative industries.

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