4 Outreach / Partnerships / Community Engagement Opportunities in England

Closing date: Sunday 17th July 2022

Department: Creative Engagement

Locations: Manchester International Festival/The Factory

The role involves some local travel in addition to desk / remote work.

Fee: £18,000

Remote status: Hybrid Remote

Employment type: Contract

Contact: Abir Tobji abir.tobji@mif.co.uk

Availability: This project is likely to take up roughly 20 hours per week

Duration: We’d like someone to start as soon as possible, this contract will run until the end of Feb 2023

Join us! We're looking for a freelance engagement manager to assist with the planning, organisation and delivery of a mass participation project leading towards the opening of The Factory.

Manchester International Festival (MIF) invites artists from across the globe to create extraordinary new work for the Festival, which is staged every two years at venues and found spaces across Manchester. The Factory is our new permanent home opening in 2023, a world-class cultural space being built in the heart of the city, where we’ll present a year-round programme and artists will be able to develop work of huge ambition and scale that they might not be able to anywhere else.

This project involves working with expectant families, as well as early years and health care providers. We’re looking for a part-time freelancer to take on the engagement manager role to support the creative engagement team. This person will help MIF design and fundraise for the project and establish necessary partnerships and recruitment strategies for participants for the project. They will also lead a number of engagement coordinators involved in the recruitment of participants and any budgets associated with this.

The project team will need to be available around the Christmas and New Year holidays 2022/23. All project team must be available from 1 to 31 January 2023.

As a freelance engagement manager you will work with the creative engagement team to:

• Lead on the engagement and participation strategy for the project, including developing ideas for participation, participant recruitment, budget forecasting, contracting, training and delivery of activity
• Lead on relationship building with participants, ensuring MIF develops meaningful and sustained relationships with people who get involved
• Manage budgets and other resources related to the project’s participatory and engagement activity
• Work closely with the head of engagement, producers and MIF’s development team to secure additional resource for participatory programmes
• Develop and maintain monitoring and evaluation frameworks, including the drafting of written evaluation reports and project updates for funders, to ensure that all the events are effectively monitored and evaluated including for a range of stakeholders and partners
• Set up project partnerships with individuals, groups, and services across Manchester and Salford according to the project need, working alongside MIF’s community partnership manager. This might be individuals, community groups, charities, children centres, women support groups, community midwives, primary health care providers, antenatal services, and businesses amongst others
• Lead a team of coordinators leading the participant recruitment process for the project
• Develop and share learning around working with the public nationally and internationally, including representing MIF/The Factory on local, national and international networks and forums as required
• Contribute to the broader work and vision of the creative engagement team as appropriate
• Attend meetings with artists, creative teams, communication teams and other collaborators as required to provide them with relevant information
• Creation of post-production notes and summary of learnings
• Work in line with MIF’s engagement policy and other related policies such as Safeguarding, Health & Safety and GDPR to ensure the duty of care for all participants

Knowledge, skills, experience

Things that would be helpful for this work include:

• Strong communication skills and experience of writing a range of documentation including bids, briefs and progress or evaluation reports
• A track record of managing or producing projects and events to set deadlines including budget, event and contract management
• A track record of managing a delivery team
• Highly developed interpersonal skills
• Proven experience of working effectively with a range of community partners from different sectors preferably the health sector and maternity and children services
• An understanding of the health sector including its pathways and providers
• Local knowledge of Manchester and/or Salford’s communities and neighbourhoods
• An understanding of inclusive practice and different communities’ needs and barriers
• 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 background
• Excellent research and development skills and the ability to analyse, use and present information from a range of different sources
• Experience of monitoring and evaluating impact of cultural activities
• Enthusiasm for a range of arts and culture, an interest ensuring arts are accessible to all

Desirable

• Experience of working with vulnerable adults, toddlers and children and a knowledge of safeguarding and child protection legislation
• Experience and knowledge of safeguarding matters related to domestic abuse is desirable

We welcome and encourage applications from candidates who are under-represented in the creative industries.

Please make sure that you state in your application that you found this role via Creative Access.