Engagement Officer- Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings

Summary

We are the public body that looks after England’s historic environment. We champion historic places, helping people understand, value and care for them.

Opened in September 2022, Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings is a recently restored industrial mill and former maltings that has been transformed and rejuvenated with an exhibition, café, shop, offices and venue space.

We have an exciting opportunity for an Engagement Officer to join us. This is an opportunity for a creative, enthusiastic and community-driven Engagement Officer to play a crucial role in the delivery of the events, learning and outreach programme at this new heritage attraction.

We are seeking an individual with experience and expertise in community engagement, learning, museum and heritage activities and events to join the Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings visitor experience team to assist in the delivery of the Activity Plan. The Activity Plan was designed to enable Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings to play a pivotal role in connecting local people and wider communities to the heritage of the site. The Flaxmill Maltings will facilitate the development of a relationship between people and place, to the benefit of both. This includes developing a formal and informal learning programme, conceiving events and activities that engage audiences and seeking opportunities to connect with community groups. This post is funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

As Engagement Officer you will use your passion, creativity and organisational skills to work closely with the Head of Visitor Experience to lead on the delivery of the Activity Plan with a strong learning offer and outreach programme which has community engagement and participation at its core. You will work closely with the Visitor Experience Manager on the delivery of the activities and events programme at the site, co-creating engagement opportunities and activities with communities as much as possible to ensure an audience-led approach. You will also support the site to increase audience numbers and reach, ensuring that core and priority target audience groups are fully engaged through the offer (these include local residents and young people).

You will be part of and work with a small staff team, and a large pool of volunteers. You will be proactive, creative, and target-driven, optimising every opportunity to engage with audiences and to generate income to achieve site performance targets. You will be enthusiastic and innovative, finding new ways to promote the activities and offers in ways that are inclusive to all, and ensuring that all who visit and take part in activities have an exceptional experience.

The role is fixed term contract until 31 March 2025 with a possibility of extension after this.

The role is 37 hours per week and will be site-based, although hybrid working will be considered. It will include some weekend and occasional evening work within contracted hours. Annual leave is 25 days plus bank holidays (some to be taken in lieu). Appointment will be subject to a successful DBS check.

What you will be doing

• Managing the delivery of the Activity Plan to ensure all activities are fully developed, planned, delivered and evaluated on time and within budget.
• Ensuring that The National Lottery Heritage Fund are engaged and informed on the progress against the Activity Plan and its targets, working with the Visitor Experience team and Historic England team to collate reports.
• Liaising, booking and working with partners and stakeholders, including volunteers, where necessary to assist the development and delivery of activities and events.
• Building sustainable ways of delivering activities for the future, maximising the value for participants as well as the organisation and partners.
• Ensuring diversity within the content, audiences and delivery for all activities both onsite, through e-learning, digital resources and through outreach making the offer inclusive to all.
• Creating and organising resources to assist the delivery of the programmes.
• Ensuring that the public offer is coherent and distinctive, appealing to increasingly broad audiences and with a strong public and critical response and reinforcing the unique Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings heritage.
• Ensuring learning and participation to develop initiatives which align with the interpretation and wider site / area connections.
• Planning, developing and testing ideas with the local community and target audiences.
• Ensuring that expenditure on activities is controlled within approved budgets.
• Working with the Visitor Experience Manager to ensure that appropriate staff and volunteer resource, and site spaces, are available to assist the delivery of the activity programme.
• Working with Historic England to identify and apply for funding to assist ongoing delivery of the activities programme.
• Champion and promote the activities programme at Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings through ongoing dialogue with funders, stakeholders and delivery partners.
• Liaising with partnership organisations to ensure development and delivery sessions and full project details are relayed and established efficiently and collaboratively.
• Working alongside Visitor Experience team colleagues and the Historic England Marketing and Communication team to ensure activities and events are appropriately marketed (using social media, website, PR, etc) to ensure wide visibility to the public, including developing and uploading marketing and communications content yourself as and when required.
• Gathering relevant information and feed this into the ongoing evaluation of the project.
• Ensuring that all activities delivered are done so in accordance with the organisation’s policies and procedures around key areas, including but not restricted to fire safety, safeguarding, first aid, incident reporting, risk management and GDPR.
• You will also be expected to undertake any other reasonable duties commensurate with the grade and competencies required of the post requested by line management.

Who we are looking for

• Have a good knowledge and comprehension of effective community engagement
• Be able to plan and safely deliver activities aimed at engaging the community and diversifying audiences
• Be experienced in developing and maintaining effective partnerships with internal and external stakeholders, such as staff, volunteers, and funding bodies, schools and community groups
• Be experienced in delivering to targets and reporting
• Be enthusiastic, positive and have a solution-driven approach to achieve tangible results

The transformation project has been led by Historic England, with the majority of funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund thanks to National Lottery players and in partnership with Shropshire Council.

This role will be employed by Historic England (Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings) Ltd., the site operations and trading company, but you will work closely alongside partners at Historic England. The existing Activity Plan and this role is funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and therefore the postholder will play a key part in ensuring that progress against the delivery of the plan and its outputs and outcomes is recorded, evaluated and reported to them.

How to apply

Please send a copy of your CV and a covering letter explaining how you meet the requirements of the role via the button below by 11.59pm on  18 March 2024.

Please note you are not required to complete the Historic England Applied Recruitment forms.

Interviews are due to take place on Thursday 28 March 2024.

If you have any questions about the role, please contact Simon Cranmer: Simon.Cranmer@ShrewsburyFlaxmillMaltings.co.uk

To find out more about Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings visit:

https://www.shrewsburyflaxmillmaltings.org.uk/

We are an equal opportunity employer which values diversity and inclusion. If you have a disability or neurodiversity, we would be happy to discuss reasonable adjustments to the job with you. Having just won the Gold Award from MIND, we also recognise the importance of a healthy work-life balance.

We are committed to promoting equality of opportunity for everyone. Diversity helps us to perform better and attract more people to support our work. We welcome and encourage job applications from people of all backgrounds.

Please follow the link for a full copy of the Job Description -

https://historicengland.org.uk/media/vbyejqp0/sfm-engagement-officer-jd-2024-new.odt