Community Engagement Project Manager – Isle of Wight

Five Isle of Wight museums are looking for a Community Engagement Project Manager to support us to deliver our It’s Your Museum project. This project will enable us to better connect with our local populations and enable more people to engage with heritage.

We are looking for someone with significant experience in scoping, developing and implementing community engagement programmes. Your work will put the detailed plans in place that will ensure the success of this project.

Initially you will help us to develop and test ideas on how we reach and benefit the wider community. This will include working with the partnership to understand the current position, ambitions and resources available.

This role is offered as a consultancy/freelance opportunity. It is expected that the post holder would spend time with each museum and be flexible to fit in with the needs of the project partners individually and collaboratively.

The post is offered at 50 days over six months at £12,000 plus extra for travel and accommodation.

As our consultant, you will work on site alongside partner museums as they plan and deliver site-based community engagement activity. The partnership will support you with this through facilitating regular update and feedback meetings. You will also compile an evaluation report and presentation to be delivered to ourselves and the wider heritage sector.

We are a group of five museums based on the Isle of Wight who recognise the role museums play in enriching and improving the quality of life, health, well-being and the local economy of residents, local business and visitors here on the Isle of Wight. We are collectively working together, alongside Creative Island, to achieve a better understanding of how we can promote these outcomes through our project It’s Your Museum.

The partner museums are: The Classic Boat Museum, Brading Roman Villa, Isle of Wight Steam Railway, Dinosaur Isle, The Shipwreck Centre & Maritime Museum and Creative Island.

With this project we aim to reconnect and deepen the relationship with the local community and with each other. Collectively, we see community engagement as encompassing the whole of our Island. Individually, however, each partner museum will have its own geographical area or target audience they wish to work with.

By working collaboratively, we will undertake a six-month community engagement project. We will make use of your specialist community engagement skills to test ways of strengthening the relationship each museum has with its local community. Alongside this we intend to explore which organisations we might work with to extend our reach and relevance, so you will need to understand how to help us reach a wide range of audiences.

The project will deliver the following outcomes:

• Access to and engagement with museums will have been extended to a wide range of community audiences, including participation in cultural activity which is inclusive and accessible.
• More visits from local postcodes will have been recorded by each museum.
• A network of contacts across the Island community including people and organisations will have been created.
• The legacy of partnership working will demonstrate the possibilities of future projects to enhance the resilience of the sector.

We want to work with a dynamic individual who is passionate about our Island and its diverse heritage.

As a partnership we are committed to working in ways that celebrate diversity and to enabling people from all communities to be part of our work.

You will share with us, through your work, your ability to make connections within a community.

Through these connections your creativity will help us to understand and break down any barriers to engagement.

Your expertise in galvanising people will allow us to welcome our whole Island community into our museums.

The project will have legacy outputs demonstrated by new learning resources, engagement tools, collaborative working processes and community relationships.

You will need to work alongside us to secure the best pathways to this success, ensuring that project activity meets the needs of each project partner individually as well as collectively.

Our project outcomes should inform and be threaded throughout well planned activity, resulting in tangible outputs that have a lasting impact and legacy for partners, and for Isle of Wight communities.

Culture and museums will be seen as collaborative, ambitious spaces within which to achieve, aspire and succeed reflecting the needs of all future generations.

Success will mean that we will have set up, grown and developed a partnership and started to develop our community engagement expertise in a model that we can share with the wider heritage sector on the Isle of Wight.

Ideally, we would like you to start working with us early in 2024 and be available to work with us until the project is completed by Spring 2024.

The key dates and deliverable actions are as follows:

January-February 2024

Commission engagement specialist; agree project and delivery plans.

March -April

Deliver project outputs as per agreed museum and partnership objectives.

May 2024

Seek and collate feedback for evaluation and compile report.

June 2024

Presentation of project learning to project partners and wider sector.

If you are interested in working with us on this project and would like to be considered for this consultancy, you will need to send us your CV and a cover letter or email outlining how you see yourself working with us and what you could bring to the project.

Please send these via email to [email protected] by 5pm on Friday 24 November 2023.

After the closing date, we will review the proposals received and invite selected people to meet with us online in the week commencing Monday 4 December 2024. Following these initial meetings, we will schedule further in person interviews during the week beginning Monday 11 December 2024.

If you have any queries about this role, please send them to us on the email address above and one of the team will get back to you as soon as possible.