Trustee Recruitment Pack
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The Story Musuem - Trustee Recruitment Pack Trustee Recruitment Pack June 2021 1 The Story Musuem - Trustee Recruitment Pack 2 The Story Musuem - Trustee Recruitment Pack “A little bit of one story joins onto an idea from another, and hey presto… not old tales but new ones” Salman Rushdie, ‘Haroun and the Sea of Stories’ 1. Introduction The Story Museum was founded as a registered charity in 2003 in response to the clear need to encourage literacy and creativity amongst children and young people and therefore improve life chances. Our mission is to enrich lives, particularly young and disadvantaged lives, through stories. We are achieving this from our most unusual Museum located in the historic centre of Oxford, a city where so many stories - real and fictional - have begun; it is also a place characterised by the educational and social inequality that The Story Museum aims to combat. We create imaginative, immersive exhibitions and events that invite our visitors to explore stories in all forms drawn from across time and around the world. Through this interaction with stories and storytellers, visitors of all ages nurture their creativity, skills and wellbeing. They discover and shape their own narrative. Alongside our public offer, we run participatory projects with targeted groups of children in schools and community settings, intended to address inequalities in access to books, creative learning and cultural capital. Having initially worked in schools and the community, developing our programmes and action research, we found a permanent home in 2010 in a dilapidated old site in the centre of Oxford. Over a 10 year period and several phases of capital works requiring £10m of public and philanthropic support, we transformed it into a place of wonder. All the while we continued to deliver pop-up exhibitions and creative projects, with leading storymakers and artists, reaching over 200,000 children and families even in our temporary state. By early 2020, we were ready to unveil five new semi-permanent exhibitions, a theatre, gorgeous learning and activity spaces and a magical visitor experience. We had established a sustainable base from which we could scale our reach and impact, 3 The Story Musuem - Trustee Recruitment Pack fulfilling our potential as a national home of story, capable of engaging over 100,000 children and families a year. Unfortunately, 2020 was not the joyous re-opening year we had planned with our artists and our audiences. The global pandemic forced us into extended periods of closure and uncertainty. Like many cultural enterprises across the UK, we fought hard for survival: radically reworking our exhibitions for only brief periods of public opening, drawing in emergency grants, sustaining our team of 40 through furlough and fragmented working. We transferred activity on-line where we could maintain our distinctiveness and impact: storytellings, performances, school sessions, co-creation projects were all successfully delivered to children and young people via their screens. In Spring 2021 we are emerging from the Covid-19 crisis bruised but bold. As we re-open our Museum to the public and re-start school and community programmes, under the unifying theme of ‘Hopes and Heroes’, we are more focused than ever on our social impact mission. We will harness the power of stories to create opportunities for children and young people, especially those who have been hit hardest by Covid-19. Happily, our longstanding approach to learning – which is to create enjoyable encounters with stories whilst delivering clear educational and wellbeing outcomes – aligns well with the national ‘catch up’ effort for children and young people. We will continue to put their voices at the heart of our work. Caroline Jones, CEO May 2021 4 The Story Musuem - Trustee Recruitment Pack Our longstanding strategic aims are to: 1) Develop and share great ways of enjoying great stories for a diverse audience 2) Harness the power of stories to enable learning and wellbeing 3) Maintain a collection of 1001 stories and use them to create change 4) Expand audiences and deepen their engagement 5) Establish a resilient and sustainable organisation Links to find out more: • Our website www.storymuseum.org.uk • What’s On digital brochure May to September 2021 https://www.flipsnack.com/StoryMuseum/story-museum-whats-on-guide-may- august-2021.html • Stories from the Woodshed – stories from our 1001 Collection recorded in our theatre https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL63MXpsbQb_ ZqgsqBgdfKMc9GuPGNg9NQ • Story Heroes – a series of author and illustrator interviews: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL63MXpsbQb_Y9- OBlLdaBP98rSLRV0lDo • A short film made in March 2021 to mark the end of the ‘Chapter 2’ capital project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgBt9GNpCXc 5 The Story Musuem - Trustee Recruitment Pack Recent press coverage: i Newspaper, 4 January 2020 “Let your imagination run wild at the revamped Story Museum. New for 2020, Oxford’s centre of storytelling will feature the Whispering Wood and Small Worlds.” Observer, 15 March 2020 “For fans of children’s literature, it is an unmissable sight: Philip Pullman’s own alethiometer, a detailed realisation of the magical symbol reader described in Northern Lights, gleaming with secrets – or possibly even particles of ‘Dust’ – on display at the new Story Museum in Oxford.” National Geographic Traveller, 4 August 2020 “Step into an interactive wonderland where author Philip Pullman co-narrates City of Stories, an audio-visual time-travelling journey through Oxford’s literary history, explore an enchanted library, see stories brought to life through puppet shows, theatre and spoken-word performances in the Woodshed and don’t get lost in the Whispering Wood.” Guardian, 20 October 2020 “Lockdown halted the opening of the ‘interactive and sensory experience’ but innovation and determination have won the day.” Museums and Heritage Advisor. 23 October 2020 “The journey from inception to grand opening has been anything but simple for The Story Museum. Like so many of the literary masterpieces it celebrates, the institution’s tale is littered with highs and lows and frequent doses of surprise.” The Times, 26 October 2020 “Oxford’s new Story Museum transformed into a world-class wonderland.” Museum Mum, 27 October 2020 “We found Narnia! The magical world of children’s books really comes to life in the newly refurbished @thestorymuseum in Oxford.” Daily Mirror, 29 October 2020 “The Story Museum has had it’s long-awaited happy ending after its grand new launch was sadly delayed by lockdown – and the attraction has now opened its doors to happy children.” BRITAIN, 1 December 2020 “For me, this wonderful, happy place is a fabulous moving nostalgia-fest for adults, made spine-tinglingly friendly for children.” Sunday Times, 30 May 2021 Number 1 in ‘Things to do this Half Term’ “The university city is not short of literary connections - it has been the home of Alice and Lyra; Tolkien and CS Lewis. So a museum dedicated to storytelling make a lot of sense here, and having opened for all of two weeks last October it’s finally able to launch properly.” 6 The Story Musuem - Trustee Recruitment Pack “I used to think reading was fine but now I think it’s the best thing in the world!” Extreme Reading Project Participant 2. Background to Trustee posts By September 2021 there will be four vacancies on our Board, due to long-serving trustees coming to the end of their Terms. We are therefore recruiting to replace their particular professional skills and experiences in: • Publishing • Creative Producing & Venues • Museums & Heritage • Teaching & Education We anticipate recruiting at least one Trustee from each of the above priority skill sets. The Board and CEO are committed to increasing diversity of the Trustees to enable them to best serve The Story Museum’s mission. Their stated goal is to reach and maintain 25% (4) of the 12 Trustees being from groups identified as under-represented across TSM’s workforce. This includes people from the Global Majority, specifically the African diaspora; South, East, and South East Asian diaspora; the Middle East and North Africa. We also encourage applications from people with disabilities and people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Our Museum is fully wheelchair accessible and we can offer remote attendance at meetings if needed. The four new Trustees will join us at an exciting and busy time as we finally get our new Museum open and work towards full operation over Summer 2021. After 10 years of planning, fundraising and phases of building work, we now intend to prove it’s all been worth it! 7 The Story Musuem - Trustee Recruitment Pack “...stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and dreams. They are journeys you can make to the far side of the universe and still be back in time for dinner.” Neil Gaiman 3. Governance Structure Purpose of the Board The Purpose of the Board is to guide the Executive of The Story Museum in the delivery of their strategic vision in accordance with the charitable objects as set out in the Memorandum and Articles. The Board also ensure that TSM fulfils its fiduciary and statutory duties in accordance with its registered charitable status and own governance. We also hope that the experience of being a Trustee is an enriching and fun one! Each meeting includes a range of presentations and discussions across the creative programme, social impact and organisational aspects of the museum, alongside the necessary financial, governance and risk- focused discussions. We encourage Trustees to develop direct and supportive relationships with the senior team so that they can ‘see under the bonnet’ of the organisation, thereby better understanding how it works and how they can add value. See Appendix A for Charity Commission ‘Essential Trustee’ summary.