Wunderbar Festival : : Wanted: Production and Marketing Assistant

Wanted: Production and Marketing Assistant

Purpose of post

This role reports to the Creative Producer to deliver efficient and effective production, marketing and administrative assistance for the Wunderbar Festival, which takes place between November 6th and 15th 2009.

Areas of Responsibility

This role will provide marketing, production and administrative assistance for the Wunderbar Festival which is managed and overseen by the Wunderbar Creative Producer, Ilana Mitchell, and Executive Producer, Kevin Isaacs (who also holds the post of Marketing and Communications consultant), both of whom are directors of Wunderbar Festival Ltd.

The Production and Marketing Assistant will be expected to provide support for the production, co-ordination, marketing and administration of the 2009 Wunderbar Festival. Working principally alongside the Creative Producer as well as in liaison with the Executive Producer, this will involve working closely with artists, venues, funders and other partners in the region and across the UK, as well as with core staff and contracted freelancers. The post holder will also be responsible for occasionally supervising volunteers.

This is an exciting opportunity to become a key part of the core delivery team for this inaugural festival and to have an impact on the organisation as it develops. As a core position within a small team, the successful applicant will be fully immersed in the process of delivering the festival. It’s a job for someone with creative energy, who wants a job they can get their teeth into and run with.

The post will be a part-time fixed term contract on a freelance basis. It is expected that the post holder will work for 2-3 days a week June – September, increasing to a full time equivalent in the run up to and during the festival.

Job Description

Festival Production:

To support festival and project production, research and evaluation. Tasks may include:

Liaising with artists, venues and partner organisations, on such matters as project delivery, contracts, scheduling and events
Booking travel and accommodation for staff and artists
Organising artist and key guest itineraries
Acting as point of contact between partner venues and artists.

Marketing assistant responsibilities:

To provide administrative support as necessary to ensure smooth delivery of marketing activity on a day to day basis which may include:

Assisting with writing, proofing and editing texts for press, website and publication
Liaising with contracted designers, web developers, PR consultants, venues, performing artists / companies and the Wunderbar team to ensure that we have all copy, images and performance information as needed and on time.
Maintaining electronic photo stacks of performing artists and companies and distribute as necessary (e.g.: to PR agency, venue marketing teams).
Ensuring that full, up to date, and correct programme and listings information is fed through to the PR agency and Sponsorship Consultant.
Implementing distribution of all marketing and promotional materials as needed.
Managing any external distributors and volunteers as required.
Ensuring display material and front of house promotional materials are in place for Wunderbar Festival Events
Updating the website in conjunction with the Website developer
Tactical marketing activity as required to support the overall festival and its component events.
Maintaining a record of box office figures and output data for all Wunderbar Festival Events.
Assisting in the implementation and analysis of audience research at all Wunderbar events, through audience questionnaires and other documentation to feed into the final evaluation of the festival.

General:

Organising and minuting meetings with artists, funders, venues and partners
General office management, including dealing with telephone and email enquiries, maintaining office filing systems, ordering stationery etc.
Assisting with preparation of reports for funders and partner organisations
Assisting in the maintenance, updating and development of audience and contact database

Person specification

Essential qualities:

Experience of project/ arts administration
Strong verbal and written communication skills, with typing & proof-reading experience
Excellent office and administrative skills
Self-motivated and able to work on own initiative
Computer literate (particularly Mac)
Knowledge of social networking/ e-marketing arena.
Ability to work flexible weekday hours and occasional evening or weekends when needed
Understanding of and commitment to equal opportunities

Desirable qualities:

Degree, or relevant experience, in arts/arts administration
Knowledge of performance/live art/contemporary art world.
Experience of working within a festival structure.

Terms of contract

This post will be based at Wunderbar’s office at The Brick Works Studio, 6 Hannington Street, Ouseburn, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE6 1JT, commencing June 2009.

A fee of £6,000 will be offered for the duration of the contract (June – December 2009). This fee will be payable in four installments of £1,500 on presentation of invoice.

The post holder will be responsible for his / her own tax and insurance.

Reasonable expenses, the level of which will be agreed in advance of contract with the Creative Producer and Executive Producer, will be available for costs incurred in delivering the contracted services.

Whilst the post will be based at Wunderbar’s offices in Byker, the Festival Assistant will be expected to spend a proportion of the time away from the office to fulfill the requirements of the post. Reasonable expenses will be paid for travel.

There will be some requirement to work anti-social hours (evenings / weekends, especially during events and festival weeks).

Application Process

Please send a letter, outlining what you will bring to the post and what you hope to achieve from being involved with Wunderbar Festival (max 1 side A4) plus a CV to:

Ilana Mitchell, Creative Producer:
ilana@wunderbarfestival.co.uk

For further information please contact Ilana on the email address above or telephone 07961 169252

Deadline for receipt of applications: 5pm Thursday 21st May 2009
Interviews are scheduled for Wednesday 27th May 2009

Information about Wunderbar Festival, November 6th – 15th 2009

Wunderbar Festival – nurturing a culture of curiosity by bringing audiences and artists together on journeys of intrigue and wonder

The Wunderbar Festival 2009 is the first of a new, biennial contemporary performance/live art festival – an international festival with a regional heart, bringing high quality, contemporary artists and work from around the world to the North East. Wunderbar Festival will be a festival everyone who lives in and visits the north east can encounter and interact with, creating experiences that are both extraordinary and playful, brave and mischievous, intriguing and, of course, wonderful.

In 2009 the festival will be focused in Newcastle Gateshead, with potentially a very small number of satellite events happening elsewhere (Sunderland, Tees Valley). The long term aim is for the festival to reach across the entire North East region (Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland, Tees Valley and Northumberland)

The programme – a brief overview

Wunderbar Festival places the audience at the very heart of the experience, exploring participation and social interaction to its very limits, and taking inspiration from the curiosity of the region’s audiences. It will create a place for activity, spontaneity, society, interaction, dialogue and play – and will be a festival with festivity at its heart.

The programme for 2009 brings together a collection of artists and works that explore at their heart the social dynamics of participation and the various roles audiences can play within creative exchange – artists who extrude the meaning of ‘audience’ as far and in as many ways as it will stretch. The festival will also explore the specific cultural, geographical and historical dynamics that make the north east the place that it is, inviting and encouraging responses that engage with this landscape and the people that make and inhabit it.

New commissions include Joshua Sofaer’s Tours of People’s Homes: Hot on the heels of his Arcus residency in Moriya, Japan, we are commissioning Sofaer to develop a new work that invites people to create events in their own homes, and open them to the public:

“You might be invited to stay for a meal or a coffee morning or maybe even a sleepover. You might get an architectural tour of the building but the real idea is that you will hear real people’s stories of living in the North East. We’re in an economic downturn but DIY sales are booming. People are concentrating on their own homes and there is this phrase that an Englishman’s house is his castle. It’s the one place where you can do anything but this is a chance to share it with others.” Joshua Sofaer, as quoted in The Journal 5 May 2009

Artist collective The People Speak will host their Who Wants to be…? event – the ask the audience gameshow that challenges the audience to collectively decide how to spend the money raised by the price of the tickets in which a kitty made up of the collected ticket money they paid.

“Did you know that in the ‘Ask the Audience’ bit of the TV game show ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire‘, the audience is right 98.9% of the time? ‘Who Wants to Be…?’ is a live reality game-show where the audience make up the questions, have all the answers, and set their own rules, using a simple voting system.” From theps.net

Wunderbar Festival is funded by Arts Council England and One North East, supported by Fierce Earth and forms part of NewcastleGateshead’s world-class festivals and events programme developed by culture10.

The Company:

Following a period of research and development commissioned by Arts Council England, North East and led by Fierce Earth, a West Midlands based organisation that curates and produces Fierce! Festival, along with North East consultants Ilana Mitchell and Beth Rowson, a new organisation in the North East has been set up to run the festival, called Wunderbar Festival Ltd (WFL). Wunderbar Festival Ltd has three founding directors – Ilana Mitchell, Kevin Isaacs and Helga Henry. Wunderbar Festival Ltd is developing a board during 2009/2010.

Between January and June 2008 the research team conducted an in-depth consultation process with potential partner organisations, artists, and producers, including local authorities across the region. This was very much a two-way process, not only aimed at securing support for such a festival, but determining very clearly from the outset how each organisation could become a stakeholder in the festival and get involved, whether as a collaborator, offering something for the programme, or as a producing or presenting partner. Alongside this Fierce Earth contracted Audiences North East to research potential audiences for a new festival, based on existing data from past events in the region and Tent, a North East based research consultancy firm, to run focus groups with potential audience and partners on the programme, shape and branding of the festival.

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