Community Co-production Mentor

**Community Co-Production Mentor - Kirklees Museums & Galleries**:
**Organisations**
- Kirklees Museums & Galleries
- **Hours**
- Freelance
- **Number of Jobs**
- 1
- **Location(s)**
- Hybrid (Huddersfield-based with remote working options)
- **Position type**
- Temporary
- **Length of contract**
- November 2025 - October 2026
- **Kirklees Museums & Galleries - Community Co-Production Mentor**

**Fee: £9,000**

**Introduction**

This is an exciting opportunity for a creative and innovative heritage professional to be involved in shaping one of the largest heritage-led developments in the North.

Kirklees Council’s Museums and Galleries (KM&G) would like to commission a freelance Mentor to help us create and pilot a Community Co-Production Framework for our museums service. The Mentor will work closely with the curatorial and engagement teams, and other staff as necessary, to help review previously co-produced exhibitions and existing displays with community groups and create a framework for future development work. This will be linked to our ambitious new museum and gallery in Huddersfield town centre, which is due to open in 2029 as part of Our Cultural Heart, as well as emerging development plans for our two North Kirklees sites - Oakwell Hall and Country Park and Bagshaw Museum.

This mentoring programme will support our curatorial team and engagement team by providing a breadth of knowledge linked to community co-production and will upskill the wider museums and galleries staff with a robust understanding of how to build on previous community programmes and take steps to integrate and embed community co-production into our work. We are seeking a mentor rather than a consultant, who will support staff to develop skills which will contribute to the sustainability of the service in best practice co-production.

This freelance opportunity has been made possible by Arts Council England, as Kirklees Museums and Galleries is funded as a National Portfolio Organisation 2023-2027 and developing this framework is a key NPO Outcome.

**Background**

KM&G is a local authority museums service which manages two museums (Bagshaw Museum and Tolson Museum), one historic house and a country park (Oakwell Hall and Country Park), along with a huge collection of objects, and fine and decorative art held on behalf of the people of Kirklees. We also hold an extensive and significant collection of artwork as part of Huddersfield Art Gallery, which is currently closed while Kirklees Council delivers a major capital regeneration project - Our Cultural Heart - to develop a hub for cultural experiences within Huddersfield town centre. This will include a new museum and gallery housed in the Grade II Listed Building that was previously Huddersfield Library and Art Gallery. KM&G led on the development of the Kirklees Heritage Strategy: We are making history, published in 2024, and the service is seeking funding to implement the Strategic Heritage Action Plan, which includes the development of a Heritage Partnership which will be key to developing successful community rooted co-production.

**Scope of Mentor Commission**

We anticipate that the mentoring programme will take place between November 2025 and October 2026.

The appointed Mentor will support development of a Co-Production Framework for Kirklees Museums and Galleries by working closely with our Curatorial Team, Learning and Engagement Team, Operational Manager, and Business and Audiences Manager.

Rather than a consultant-led approach, we are looking for a Mentor who can support the team sustainably, developing skills within the service in order to:

- Identify and develop key aspects of a Co-Production Framework for the Service which will:

- Provide a model for future successful community dialogue on exhibitions and collecting, including managing expectations and realistic outputs and outcomes
- Be suitable to be used with all community groups within Kirklees
- Explore the key stories our exhibitions can tell that will interest local communities
- Contribute to our plan to develop more community voices within our interpretation in order to increase representation, address contested histories and implement a decolonisation programme for our collection and galleries
- Build on existing work carried out previously in the service such as the Bringing out the Best National Lottery Heritage Fund report
(see our Virtual Tours and Museum Blog for reference)
- Support development of our current Collections Development Policy with an action plan to include an approach to growing the community collection through loans or acquisition
(see current Policy on our website)
- Provide advice and expertise to inform next steps for long-term planning linked to Our Cultural Heart, Oakwell and Country Park and Bagshaw Museum development plans, and the future of Kirklees Museums and Galleries service, and to inform the development phase of a major funding bid to support community co-production