Closing date: 20 June

The brief in summary

We are recruiting for the following role:

1. An experienced consultant for a 6 month part time consultancy contract. The brief is to work with the funding and delivery partners – the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Big Lottery Fund and Local Trust – to design and deliver the development phase of a new £4m, 3 year programme, called Creative Civic Change.

About the programme

The partners believe that the arts and creativity are a powerful means of enabling communities to improve their local areas. They can help to challenge negative pre-conceptions about areas and create a more positive self–image; fuel regeneration and local economic development, encourage social cohesion, raise aspirations and help communities tackle social issues in a way that is both engaging and de-stigmatising.

Creative Civic Change will support communities to realise their visions for improving their areas using the arts and creativity. In this programme communities will be in the lead, with artists, arts organisations, and potentially other civil society organisations, supporting them to achieve their plans and goals (see the annex for a fuller description of the programme).

Our planning assumptions are that:

-10 areas will be supported through the programme;

– 5 of these will be Big Local (BL) areas and 5 will be areas with similar characteristics (e.g. perceived as deprived based on a number of different indices and generally with little social infrastructure and low cultural capital).

But, the design phase of the programme may challenge these assumptions.

About the partners

The Big Lottery Fund uses money raised by National Lottery players to help communities achieve their ambitions. From small, local projects to UK-wide initiatives, the funding brings people together to make a difference to their health, wellbeing and environment. Since June 2004 Big Lottery Fund have awarded £8.5 billion to projects that improve the lives of millions of people.

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation is one of the largest European foundations. It supports projects across the social, economic, environmental and cultural spectrum. In the UK it is particularly well known for its support of the arts and culture. Over recent years it has sought to promote participatory performing arts. Its Inquiry into the Civic Role of Arts Organisations is a particular inspiration for this programme. The Creative Civic Change partnership is one element of the work that the Foundation is doing as follow up to its Inquiry report: Rethinking Relationships.

Local Trust administers the Big Local programme. 150 areas across the country, which are funding ‘cold spots’ and have high scores on various deprivation indices, are receiving £1m to spend over 10-15 years. Key characteristics of the programme are: local people decide how the money is spent, the areas are hyper-local, appropriate support is provided to build local confidence and skills and areas move at their own pace. Local partnerships decide their own priorities and how best to meet them.