COMMUNITY LEAD
Purpose: To collaboratively lead and develop Spectra’s Community Programme of radically inclusive creative workshops.
Aim: To lift everyone’s capacity to influence change
Terms: Freelance contract with long-term possibility, 25 days starting w/c 29 Jan 2024 for 4 months (roughly 1.5 days per week)
Fee: £5,000 (based on a rate of £200/day)
Benefits: Access and travel budgets available, development opportunities
Location: Sandwell, West Midlands
DEADLINE: 9am, Tues 19 Dec 2023
What is Spectra’s Community Programme?
Our Community Programme consists of ongoing workshops with a wide range of partners and individuals. Our approach is co-creative, non-hierarchical and radically inclusive, which means we create new inclusive spaces with people rather than finding ways to include them in exclusive spaces. Some of our current partners include a paediatric ward at a hospital, an SEN school, a refugee and asylum seeker support organisation, the RSPB, young adults with learning disabilities, and a community centre. Our work regularly draws inspiration from the natural world and aims to encourage environmental stewardship.
What would I do in this role?
- Work with Spectra’s Creative Director and Creative Lead to plan creative workshops that develop agency for people from a diverse range of backgrounds.
- Deliver creative workshops with other Spectra artists and trainee artists
- Support trainee artists to develop their skills
- Establish and deepen relationships with local community groups who might want to or already work with Spectra
- Schedule workshops and coordinate other artists’ attendance
- Contribute to evaluation
This role would suit me if I…
- am passionate about the power of creative activity to lift everyone’s capacity to influence change
- celebrate brains that work in different ways and the creative power of diversity
- am a skilled artist in any art form and enjoy collaborating with artists from other disciplines
- have facilitation skills that include creating a warm, welcoming environment for people with a variety of needs; tuning in and meeting people where they are; adapting to different settings and communication styles; encouraging and valuing contributions in a myriad of forms
- recognise my place within nature and responsibility for its care – and want to explore this through workshop delivery
- have good experience, insight and supportive communication and want to use these to develop trainee artist facilitators’ skills
- am skilled at developing and maintaining relationships with partnership organisations
- enjoy reflecting, experimenting and am open to learning with the aim of making a more meaningful impact
- am organised, reliable, have a strong work ethic, and take initiative
- demonstrate anti-racist values through my work
- have a DBS check (or are willing to have one done) and am committed to upholding a care-led approach to safeguarding.
Additional information: We intend for this role to continue as part of our core team and we’re working on securing funding to enable this. During the time of this contract, there will be opportunity to feed into how that permanent role will be shaped.
Our website is currently under development, but still provides a good sense of our work: www.wearespectra.co.uk. Follow us @SpectraArtsCompany on socials too.
Support ahead of applying: If you think this job looks great but you’re a bit cautious about putting yourself forward, please get in touch for an informal chat. We’re very happy to talk through the role, to find different ways of communicating this job description, and to explore how different kinds of experience could contribute to fulfilling this role well.
Equitable opportunities: Given our work’s active celebration of diversity and exploration of intersectionality, we want our team to reflect these values. We eagerly encourage applications from people who are from marginalised or minoritised backgrounds. Our welcome extends beyond the recruitment process; we are committed to creating a working space that is safe and caring for all.
If you need or would prefer this job description or the application form below in another format, please don’t hesitate to contact hello@wearespectra.co.uk to chat through how we can best open this opportunity to you.
Application process: an application form is available here https://forms.gle/KQaRtDP3Cd5y3qng8. This form asks for your contact details, answers to the questions below, and for three examples of relevant previous experience. If creating an audio file is more accessible for you, please answer all the questions on the form in no more than 5 minutes and send to the email above. Please do not send video, only audio. We also ask that you fill out an equal opportunities form here: https://forms.gle/GR2qquMg6deha3Pz5.
In order to minimise unconscious bias, we anonymise all applications while shortlisting and do not review equal opportunities forms until after we have drafted our initial shortlist. We aim to shortlist anyone who has met our minimum score and identifies as being from a minoritised or marginalised background. This is sometimes affected by capacity: we can shortlist no more than five applicants.
Application questions (approximately 250 words each):
- We love encouraging a broad range of responses to creative tasks: it’s part of how we ensure inclusion, how we curate playfulness, and how we end up with such imaginative work. Describe a creative workshop you’ve led in which you used a playful approach and incorporated a variety of responses to create a meaningful impact. Why is this way of working important to you?
- Tell us about a collaborative experience you’ve been part of that had an unexpected outcome. How did the collaborative approach enable this to happen?
- Scenario: While delivering a workshop at a school for young people with profound and multiple learning and physical disabilities, there are fewer members of school staff supporting than you had agreed with your contact. The session goes well but it is challenging to meet everybody’s creative needs with the level of support provided. You sense that the Artist and Trainee Artist who have been working alongside you are unsettled. How do you lead a useful reflective process for them and what action do you take in regards to the level of support provided?
DEADLINE: 9am, Tues 19 Dec 2023
SHORTLISTING DECISION: 22 Dec 2023
INTERVIEWS: in person in Smethwick w/c 8 Jan. If you are shortlisted, we will send you the interview questions and information about the panel in advance. We will also ask if any adjustments are needed to make the interview accessible for you.
Please contact hello@wearespectra.co.uk with any questions or if we can help make this opportunity more accessible to you.