Connected Communities Project Mentors – AIM

AIM Connected Communities, part of the Know Your Neighbourhood Fund supported by DCMS. 

AIM wishes to recruit a pool of freelance mentors to support successful Connected Communities projects. This is an exciting opportunity to play a role in the implementation of a central Government fund which is exploring how museums and other community organisations can tackle social issues through projects and build systems and relationships in local areas to make the work sustainable.  

Introduction

Museums have unique abilities to bring people together around collections, treasured local sites, and interesting ideas. AIM’s new programme seeks to harness these opportunities to increase wellbeing in twenty-seven specified deprived areas in England and give more people the chance to get involved in their local museum and build meaningful relationships.  

Funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Know Your Neighbourhood Fund through Arts Council England (ACE), AIM’s Connected Communities scheme offers grants of £15,000 – £100,000 to museums delivering projects in the eligible areas that will improve community connections through high-quality volunteering opportunities and/or reducing loneliness and increasing social bonds. Alongside the grants museums will participate in a capacity-building programme that will support and upskill staff and volunteers, offer expert guidance through mentorship, help build partnerships with local organisations, and ensure the grant-funded projects have a legacy both organisationally and in the eligible areas.  

This programme is part of Know Your Neighbourhood. Other elements delivered via the Arts Council are through Creative Lives UK and Libraries Connected. The other strands of the project encompass Heritage Action Zones, UK Community Foundation projects, and National Lottery Community Fund projects.   

Connected Communities is supported by the What Works Centre for Wellbeing and Heritage Volunteering Group.   

More information about the programme, including guidance for applicants, can be found here.  

Project mentors

AIM wishes to recruit a pool of freelance mentors to support successful Connected Communities projects. This is an exciting opportunity to play a role in the implementation of a central Government fund which is exploring how museums and other community organisations can tackle social issues through projects and build systems and relationships in local areas to make the work sustainable.  

This model of grants plus capacity-building through mentorship and other activities builds on the strategic investment by the National Lottery Heritage Fund into AIM’s New Stories, New Audiences programme, testing it for the first time with significant projects up to £100,000 which AIM expects will involve working with bigger organisations and consortia.  

Project Mentors will provide up to 4 days of support for successful participants in: 

• Carrying out projects supporting people suffering from or at risk of suffering from chronic loneliness. This will require an understanding of wellbeing evidence and how to apply it to developing and delivering successful social projects, which may be with vulnerable groups. 
• Carrying out projects aimed at offering high-quality volunteering opportunities. This will require an understanding of how to recruit, manage, and retain volunteers and build projects which use volunteers appropriately and offer volunteers the opportunity to build skills, confidence and social connections. 
• Identifying and building partnerships with other local institutions. This will require an understanding of the networks and ecologies of local decision-making and delivery on social connectedness issues and the ability to help museums strategise and develop sustainable relationships. 
• Ensuring project legacy. This will require an understanding of how to transition projects from one-off funding into either business as usual for the museum or effective fundraising to continue projects.

Know Your Neighbourhood is an exciting new programme which DCMS, together with ACE, hope will make significant steps in providing the evidence base for place-based public investment in these types of interventions through cultural and other kinds of community organisations. As part of the capacity-building programme AIM will be producing resources such as case studies from the projects and sector events to share the projects and similar work elsewhere in the sector. Mentors may be asked to support this work e.g. by speaking at a conference about the programme.   

For a full understanding of the programme and the kinds of projects mentors will be supporting, applicants should read the programme guidance which can be accessed here. 

Person specification 

We are looking for experienced consultants who: 

• Have experience of providing mentoring and support to projects and organisations e.g. are able to problem solve and advise those in operational and decision-making roles. Projects will be encouraged to be flexible with their project if outcomes are not initially being reached and mentors may be required to support the thinking and process of change. 
• Have good knowledge of the museums sector in England. 
• As per the support mentioned above, have a good knowledge and understanding of: 

• Loneliness or wellbeing research and interventions in a cultural context, AND/OR 
• Volunteering in museums, AND/OR 
• How museums can work with other cultural, civic, third sector and public institutions in a local area, AND/OR 
• Project legacy – how to make social projects sustainable beyond an initial funded period, either through internal resource or through fundraising. 
• Are approachable, organised, and communicate clearly and regularly with others.

There will be two rounds of Connected Communities and mentors will be matched to projects depending on what the projects want to achieve. Mentors will work with the projects to decide how and when to use the time each project has, which may include in-person around England or online contact, but must be available for the project delivery period August 2023 – end January 2025.  

Contract management

There is a fee of £650 per day, to include travel and expenses and excluding VAT. A payment schedule will be agreed on appointment.  

The role is freelance and the contractor will need to be able to work from home and provide their own IT and office equipment.  

AIM has a standard self-employed contractor agreement.   

The contractors will report to the AIM Head of Programmes.  

Successful applicants will join a pool of mentors and there is no guarantee of work as mentors will be allocated depending on the needs of the projects that apply. Some mentors may be asked whether they are willing to be allocated to more than one project. 

How to apply

Please supply: 

• Please supply a CV (no more than 3 pages) and brief covering letter (no more than 2 pages) highlighting why you are interested in this role and how you are equipped to carry it out. 
• Alternatively you can produce a four minute video providing the same information. 

Please provide 2 referees, with contact details and a brief summary (no more than 200 words) of the project you worked on with each referee.  

Proposals should be sent to AIM Head of Programmes, Margaret Harrison [email protected] by 12noon on 31 July 2023.  

Existing AIM pool consultants and mentors to AIM programmes do not need to apply separately (e.g. National Lottery Heritage Fund New Stories, New Audiences programme mentors, Welsh Government Re:Collections programme mentors, and AIM Higher consultants) but do need to confirm to AIM that you wish to be added to the Connected Communities mentor pool, mentioning any additional expertise in loneliness, volunteering, partnership-building or legacy that we are not already aware of.