Freelance Creative Practitioner

Salary range: £3,450 Closing date: 18 November 2024 Download the job pack

We are tendering for a Freelance Creative Practitioner to work on a four month long exploratory outreach project working with:

• families with children aged 0-5 from local community groups
• children with sensory impairments, their families, and teachers from the Sensory Support Team
• older adults

in both age-specific and intergenerational workshops.

The project aims to explore how creative workshops can create meaningful connections: with artworks, among participants, and between organisations. Your role will be to lead dynamic and inclusive workshops off site in community settings in Cambridge, and a final celebration event at the Museum. These will draw inspiration from Dutch still life paintings on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum.  The lunchtime workshops will empower participants to creatively connect with the paintings in ways that resonate and enrich their lives. The creative practitioner will work responsively, being flexible to the needs and interests of the groups.

This role is for someone who has experience facilitating creative engagement activities with vulnerable groups of different ages, with an emphasis on building connections between people, artworks and ideas. We are open to receiving applications from creative practitioners using innovative approaches and art forms who can take inspiration from the content of the paintings to engage diverse audiences through exciting and engaging creative activities.

A fee of £3,450 is available for this work, plus a budget of £700 for materials. Please note that we are not able to offer additional payment to cover travel/subsistence costs. Fee is inclusive of planning, delivery and evaluation.

 About Us

The Fitzwilliam Museum is widely considered the world’s outstanding university art collection. We care for works of art and material culture from Europe, Egypt and Asia of exceptional international importance, works that connect people across cultures and time. Founded in 1816 ‘for the increase of learning’, the Fitzwilliam has long been both a great public cultural asset and an extraordinary scholarly resource – local, regional, national and global.

Our vision

The Fitzwilliam Museum: opening up the past to transform our futures.

Our mission

We use art, objects, spaces and experiences to inspire reflection, connection and creativity

Tender specification

We are looking for someone who brings the following:

Skills:

• Creative Workshop Planning: Capable of designing, delivering, and evaluating creative workshops based on an initial stimulus.
• Inclusive Practice: Skilled in addressing the vulnerabilities and sensitivities of priority groups, including mental health issues, sensory impairment, disabilities, cognitive impairment, and/or adverse childhood experiences.
• Initiative and Autonomy: Proactive and able to work independently.
• Communication & Collaboration: Excellent listening & communication skills.
• Cultural Adaptability: An ability to adapt to different cultural contexts and empathise with diverse people and places.

Experience:

• Relationship Building: Skilled in cultivating relationships with vulnerable individuals to ensure their safety, engagement and active participation in the project.
• Creative Workshop Design: Proven experience in designing innovative workshops tailored to diverse audiences.
• Inclusive Group Work: Previous experience of working with groups facing barriers to participation, including intergenerational groups and participants of various ages.

Approach:

• Empathy: An empathetic mindset, focused on understanding and addressing participant needs.
• Adaptability: Confident in stepping outside your comfort zone to learn more about the participants and organisations through collaboration.
• Commitment to Inclusion: A strong and demonstrable commitment to equity, diversity, justice, inclusion and anti-discriminatory practice.
• Ethical Practice: Understanding of caring, inclusive, and ethical approaches to working with individuals, organisations and data.
• Warmth and Trust: Ability to create warm, trusting environments in which participants feel welcome and comfortable.
• Lifelong Learning: Eager to learn and research relevant themes and ideas to enhance the project’s impact.

Activities & Outputs

• Contribution to planning discussions with Fitzwilliam project staff (and partner venues)
• 7 x creative workshops based on the de Heem still life paintings (see delivery dates below)
• Active participation in monitoring and evaluation throughout the project, in line with the project’s evaluation framework

For more information about the delivery requirements, application process and submission requirements, please download the attached PDF.

For further information and to submit your tender please contact Nicola Wallis, Practitioner Research Associate: Collections & Early Childhood at the Fitzwilliam Museum Nlw30@cam.ac.uk

We are committed to anti-discriminatory practices and are keen to create opportunities for a wide range of creative practitioners. If your experience looks different from what we’ve advertised and you believe that you can bring value to the role, we’d love to hear from you. If you require any adjustments to the tender process, or participation in the project, please let us know so we can help you to be at your best.

The deadline for tenders is 6pm on Monday 18 November.

Shortlisted practitioners will be invited to an informal interview on Tuesday 26 November and will be informed of the final outcome by 2 December.