Audience Development Officer

About the role

Thank you for your interest in joining us at Warwick Arts Centre. We are on a mission to create a dynamic, relevant, and artistically ambitious and sustainable arts centre and we need more great people to help us achieve our plans.

We are committed to creating an environment where everyone feels they belong, a place of fairness and equity and to be an organisation that reflects the diversity of its city. If this sounds like somewhere you would like to work, we would like to hear from you.

This post reports to the Head of Creative Learning and the Marketing Director. Together we believe that audiences are at the heart of our vision and this post is pivotal to succeeding in our ambitions.

Warwick Arts Centre develops and delivers exceptional participatory, audience and visitor experiences with the following priorities in mind:

• Delivering a creative learning and audience development programme made and co-designed with communities and schools in areas of low engagement with the arts locally.
• Delivering a wide programme of participatory events which includes off and on stage activity at Warwick Arts Centre, involving local communities, schools and students.
• Delivering a programme of activities and events with, by and for residents and creatives which animate our foyer spaces and transform it from a transitioning space to a vibrant social hub – a venue for all our communities.
• Programming artistic work across all artforms to cater for and respond to local and national audiences and visitors. Ranging from work requiring investment to commercial, high risk to mainstream, young to seasoned and to include local, national and international.
• Supporting talent development at all levels/stages. Providing free space, advice and guidance, networking, skills and knowledge exchange opportunities. Partner with associate producers and other partners to provide artist and new work development opportunities.

Online information session

8th May 6 – 7pm on Teams

Join our Director of Marketing and Head of Creative Learning for an information session about the role. They will outline what we are looking for in the role and what makes the best application. They will also talk about Warwick Arts Centre's plans for the coming year and outline what a week might look like in the role to give candidates an idea of what the Audience Development Officer will be working on. There will also be an opportunity to ask questions.

To book a place click here .

For informal enquiries, please contact Jonathan Fogarty via email:

This role will require an enhanced DBS check with child's barred list.

About you

Our Audience Development Officer sits centrally within our Marketing and Creative Learning teams and plays a central role in supporting our work to develop our profile and maintaining our presence in our local community, connecting people of all ages and all backgrounds to Warwick Arts Centre and our programme. They will work alongside our live programming, visual arts and cinema teams and closely with our visitor experience and operations teams.

The role's central remit is to :

• Be our community liaison and work closely with our Head of Creative Learning to develop meaningful, co-produced project ideas that build a sense of belonging in our spaces.
• Support non-ticketed activity across Creative Learning, Music Centre and Gallery.
• Coordinate the storytelling and sharing of our Audience Development work, giving voices to the communities we work with across our social channels.
• Coordinate our student welcome and support activities for our student community.
• Support our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion work and be a key member of our Access Panels, ensuring that our activities are reflective of what our community need and want.
• Work closely with the Director of Marketing and Head of Creative Learning on evaluation across our activities.

This is an exciting opportunity for a candidate with a passion for audience development, engagement and access, with a good understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion and who enjoys working with people at all levels.

For further information regarding the skills required for this role please see the personal specification section of the attached job description.

About the Department

Warwick Arts Centre is the largest multi art form arts centre outside London, presenting events, activities, films and exhibitions to over 200,000 people every year.

We are one of the region's leading learning, visual arts, cinema and performing arts venues. We work with exceptional artists and creatives from the city, region and globally delivering a programme that reflects our local and global context. As an arts centre on a university campus our ambition is to develop programmes which speak to and reach our audiences on campus, in the city of Coventry and the wider region. Our city is one of the most ethnically diverse and youngest in Europe our goal is to reflect this through our work and the people we employ.

Vision and Values

When we re-opened our new building in 2021 a new brand positioning was developed with a focus on forming a better bridge between arts and the community and also highlighting the venue as a melting pot of different people and ideas:

Purpose

We're here to share our love for the arts

Belief

We believe the arts are a place we can all meet - a place to share our experiences, a place to find common ground and understanding, a place to connect, to transform and explore new possibilities together.

Promise

Experiences you'll feel and never forget –be it joy, excitement or sadness and whoever you are, wherever you're from

More information can be found on our website

Our commitment to equality

Warwick is committed to building an organisation of mutual respect and dignity, promoting a welcoming, diverse, and inclusive working and learning environment. We recognise that everyone is different in a variety of visible and non-visible ways, and that those differences are to be recognised, respected, and valued. Where possible, we go beyond legislation to provide a place where everyone can thrive, supporting all staff to achieve their full potential. We aspire to remove economic, social, and cultural barriers that may otherwise prevent people from succeeding.

We therefore welcome and encourage applications from all communities regardless of culture, background, age, disability, sex/gender, gender identity or expression, ethnicity, religion/belief, or sexual or romantic orientation. As part of our commitment to increasing the diversity of staff within the Arts Centre we are particularly keen to encourage applications from people from groups that are

Warwick Arts Centre is a department of the University of Warwick, and the successful candidate will be employed by the University of Warwick.

*Global Majority is a collective term that refers to people who are Black, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and or, have been racialised as 'ethnic minorities.'

About the University

Born in the 60s with a mindset of boldness, imagination and collaboration, the University of Warwick is a world-leading research-intensive university with the highest academic and research standards. We're one of the world's top universities, ranked 67th in the world and 10th in the UK*, with 92% of our research assessed to be 'world leading or internationally excellent'**.

You'll be joining a diverse, innovative and globally connected community committed to igniting real world progress. Here at Warwick, we offer you opportunities to follow your ambitions as long as you bring the energy and determination to succeed.

*QS World University Rankings 2024

** Research Excellence Framework 2021

To find out more about us visit our website.

How to Apply

To apply please complete your essential personal details and attach a CV and cover letter by 11.55pm on the closing date of 27th May 2024. . Please ensure your CV includes your most recent employment experience along with any additional relevant experience and education history. Your cover letter should detail how you meet the essential and desirable criteria for this post.

To streamline our hiring process, we kindly request that all candidates submit their applications through our official website. This ensures that all applications are received in a uniform format and can be processed efficiently by our HR team.

The interviews will be held on Thursday 6 June 2024

How to prepare your application

1. Please review the Job Description and the Person Specification.
2. Think about all the different types of roles you have had or work that you have done to support your application (Essential)
3. For each of the essential criterion, provide evidence/an example of what you have done that demonstrates that you have the experience, skills or knowledge we are looking for (Essential)
4. Remember to tell us why you want to work for Warwick Arts Centre. So, do your research. Look at our website to make sure that you understand the range, scope and scale of our work. Explore our context. Our role in the city of Coventry is very important to us so make sure you understand the demographics and have a view on what that means or should mean for us and our work with audiences (Essential)
5. Ask a friend/colleague to review your application and to check that you have provided examples and told the best story of your career to date and your ambitions in this role and the future (Optional)

We can only assess your application based on what you write in your application so make sure that you write your supporting statement/letter with that in mind.

What we offer

We will provide you with a great range of benefits, which include an attractive pension scheme, 26 days holiday plus Christmas closure, excellent learning and development opportunities, and savings on a wide range of products and services. We offer a generous maternity/paternity/adoption/parental leave policy, and onsite childcare facilities.

We recognise the importance of a healthy work/life balance and offer you access to flexible working, for more information click here .

We are proud to say that we are a Living Wage employer .

Our Commitment to Inclusion

Warwick is committed to building an organisation of mutual respect and dignity, promoting a welcoming, diverse, and inclusive working and learning environment. We recognise that everyone is different in a variety of visible and non-visible ways, and that those differences are to be recognised, respected, and valued. Where possible, we go beyond legislation to provide a place where everyone can thrive, supporting all staff to achieve their full potential. We aspire to remove economic, social, and cultural barriers that may otherwise prevent people from succeeding.

We therefore welcome and encourage applications from all communities regardless of culture, background, age, disability, sex/gender, gender identity or expression, ethnicity, religion/belief, or sexual or romantic orientation. To find out more about our social inclusion work at Warwick visit our webpages here .

The University currently holds a Race Equality Charter Bronze Award , Athena Swan Sliver Award and a Disability Smart Bronze Award . The University of Warwick is also one of the six founder institutions of the EUTOPIA European University Alliance .

Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS)

The University of Warwick complies with the DBS Code of Practice and undertakes not to discriminate unfairly against anyone who makes a Disclosure relating to a conviction or other information revealed. More information is available on the University's Vacancy pages and applicants may request a copy of the DBS Code of Practice.

Please note the interview date is the 6th June.