Learning and Engagement Officer Job information pack

April 2021

Hello

Welcome to the River and Museum. It’s great that you’re interested in working with us. We’re confident in the role the museum can play. We want to bring the river to life, to create a powerful sense of place, enhance the wellbeing of our communities and support a more sustainable natural environment. If you want to join us in making all this happen, please read on. There is huge potential to use the as a unifying theme to work with communities, collections, and our riverside location. Together, we can inspire learning, creativity, build participation and encourage active lives. The museum itself is a relative youngster, but the collection spans hundreds of thousands of years. Primitive stone tools through to a relay torch from the London 2012 Olympics all help engage audiences with the role humans have played in, on and around the river. In the two decades since the museum was created, the building and its activities have been shortlisted for and won many different awards. The museum galleries have evolved and grown too. An immersive ‘Wind in the Willows’ experience embraces the ongoing appeal of ’s classic story. Crowdfunding enabled us to create a gallery dedicated to exploring the life and work of local painter and designer John Piper. Like other cultural destinations around the world, the global coronavirus pandemic has rocked every area of our activity. Our recovery will see us undertake many things differently through necessity and innovation. We’ve had to make difficult decisions about how we use our resources but have been boosted by a grant award from Arts Council England’s Culture Recovery Fund. We’re determined to use this to implement improvements and approaches which will see us achieve sustainability and resilience. At the , we’re a multi-skilled team with a passion for the difference we can make to the lives of everyone through our building, collection, and location. If you’re a up for a challenge and you’re committed to the transformative power of our work, join us. We’d love to hear from you.

The River and Rowing Museum Team

River and Rowing Museum Learning and Engagement Officer Job Pack

Our values infuse our work We work with:

• Respect – for our colleagues, collaborators, and visitors, for diverse perspectives and visitors.

• Creativity – we are confident and ambitious and bring a spark and flair to what we do.

• Integrity – we strive to do excellent work we can be proud of.

We are:

• Reflective – we learn from experience and are questioning and curious.

• Collaborative – inspired by teamwork in sport, we champion collaboration within and beyond our team, and work in partnership with our communities.

• Socially responsible and environmentally friendly.

Our aims:

• Build engagement.

• Steward and celebrate our collections and iconic building.

• Become a sustainable organisation.

Where we are: We’re in eyesight of the river and on the edge of the lively town of Henley-on-Thames. The railway station is around five minutes’ walk and there are regular trains from there to the mainline serving Reading, Didcot, Maidenhead and London (Paddington). There are also buses from , Reading and High Wycombe. The M4 and M40 motorways are around a half-hour drive away.

River and Rowing Museum Learning and Engagement Officer Job Pack Team and role description The Public Engagement Team With audiences at its heart, the Public Engagement Team builds relationships with individuals, communities, and institutions to invite perspectives, curiosity, and support. Through excellent care and understanding of our own collection and the wealth of stories at our disposal we aim to create experiences that are meaningful and fun, both on-site and online. We want to work towards the museum being a platform for ideas. We want it to be a place where there are multiple viewpoints, as many questions as answers and we want to an ongoing relationship with our communities, audiences, and supporters. We work across care, understanding and curation of the collection, formal and informal learning, fundraising, marketing, and communications.

Learning and Engagement Officer If you’d like to ask anything about this role, please do get in touch: [email protected] This role reports to the Head of Public Engagement. It is based at the River and Rowing Museum, Henley-on-Thames. This is a permanent role with a salary of £19,500 based on working an average of 30 hours a week on a potentially flexible basis. There are 20 days holiday (pro rata) rising to 25 days (pro rata) after two years. We operate an auto-enrolment pension scheme. There isn’t any line management, but this role works closely with Museum Tutors and volunteers as well as contractors and consultants. Main purpose of the role:

• Facilitate the involvement of others to provide engaging experiences and the sharing of ideas.

• Develop and deliver formal and informal learning experiences in and around the museum, and online.

• Support the development of public engagement programmes and take responsibility for specific development and delivery areas.

Key Responsibilities

• Establish and develop relationships and partnerships with learning and other community groups / institutions.

• Facilitate the involvement of communities and creative practitioners to enable multiple perspectives and diversity of content.

• Involve volunteers to add value to formal and informal learning experiences.

River and Rowing Museum Learning and Engagement Officer Job Pack • Support the development of public engagement programmes and activities by collaborating with colleagues in curatorial, marketing and communications and commercial and with external practitioners and groups.

• Work with the Museum Tutors to develop new learning and engagement resources.

• Develop and work within an evaluation framework to proportionately measure and continuously improve reach and impact.

• Delivery of formal learning sessions to groups.

• Delivery of informal learning sessions to visitors.

• Work within a physical (museum & surroundings), digital and hybrid context for all learning and engagement experiences.

• Foster a culture of sustainability and efficiency by prioritising activities and relationships, and by excellent use and adaptation of resources.

• Ensure the optimum resourcing, scheduling, and safeguarding of all learning visits and activities.

• Manage enquiries, bookings, and resources for formal learning visits in conjunction with visitor operations and commercial colleagues.

• Represent the River and Rowing Museum in formal learning networks, drawing on best practice, innovation, partnership opportunities and sharing learning.

• Able to work evenings and weekend days as required.

River and Rowing Museum Learning and Engagement Officer Job Pack Person specification

Essential selection criteria

• Skilled in facilitating the involvement of diverse individuals and groups.

• Excellent listening and presentation skills.

• Experience of delivering workshops and learning sessions to groups.

• Experience of developing and delivering activities for a variety of audiences, in both a structured and unstructured format.

• Well-organised and able to act with efficiency and sustainability, particularly in the use of resources and involvement of others.

• Able to draw on insight and apply creatively to development of activities.

• Skilled in developing evaluation tools proportionate to activities and sharing learning.

• Experience of working with children in both formal education and family visitor groups.

• Experience of working within an organisation with multiple areas of focus such as conservation, commercial activity, and fundraising.

• Skilled in collaborating with others to develop programmes of activity creatively and critically.

• Experience of involving volunteers to add value to activities.

Desirable selection criteria

• Experience of developing specific online learning and engagement content.

• Experience of working with communities who have experienced barriers to visiting museums.

• Skilled in facilitating debate and discussion with complex and / or emotive subjects.

• Experience of working with neuro-diverse groups and optimising experiences for them.

River and Rowing Museum Learning and Engagement Officer Job Pack How to apply Please send us a CV together with a supporting statement that covers the following points:

• Tell us about your experience of working with communities to listen to and amplify their voices. What were the key principles you worked to?

• Tell us about your experience of collaborating with different areas to develop an offer. What did you particularly contribute to the process?

• With so many audience choices and topics / themes to explore, how would you prioritise relationships and activities?

• What do you think are the limitations of and opportunities of digital learning and engagement events? Tell us your experience of developing online resources to provide learning and/or engagement. Don’t worry if you haven’t worked in this area, just tell us your experience as an audience of online learning and/or engagement experiences.

If you prefer, you can record a video summarising your CV and a video covering the supporting statement points above. However – please make sure you send these as a link to a file-sharing site and not the video files themselves.

Please also complete our equal opportunities monitoring form.

All documents or video file-sharing links should be sent to [email protected]

We’ll be accepting applications up to midnight on Monday 17 May. Interviews will be in the week beginning Monday 24 May and will take place online, but you’re very welcome to visit the museum from Thursday 20 May when it reopens to the public. Finally, please ensure that you have included your contact number and email address, as well as any dates when you will not be available or might have difficulty with the indicative timetable.

Data protection Equal opportunities

Information you give us as part of your application will What you tell us on the Equal Opportunities be used in the recruitment process. We’ll hold any data Monitoring Form will be used to monitor our policy about you securely with access restricted to those and practices. We won’t use it in any part of the working with your application and in the recruitment selection process. We want to employ a workforce process. Once this process is completed the data that reflects the diversity of backgrounds and cultures relating to unsuccessful applicants will be stored for a within which we operate and to provide a working maximum of 6 months and then destroyed. If you are environment free from any form of harassment, the successful candidate, your application form will be intimidation, bullying, victimisation, or discrimination. retained and form the basis of your personnel record. We will treat individuals openly and fairly with dignity When you send us your completed application you’re and respect, and value their contribution towards giving your consent to your data being stored and providing a quality service to our customers. processed for the purposes of the recruitment process, equal opportunities monitoring and your personnel Depending on the number of applications, we may record if you are the successful candidate. not be possible to shortlist all candidates who meet the essential criteria. However, as part of our commitment to the ‘Disability Confident’ scheme, we guarantee to interview all disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria.

River and Rowing Museum Learning and Engagement Officer Job Pack

“There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

Kenneth Grahame

All images © River and Rowing Museum

River and Rowing Museum Learning and Engagement Officer Job Pack