Board Member
Borderlines Film Festival
Hereford and Malvern
Salary: Voluntary
Borderlines Film Festival is recruiting a new member for their Board of Trustees.
About Borderlines Film Festival
Borderlines, Britain’s largest rural film festival, celebrated its 22nd year in 2024. Spectacularly well-attended, it welcomes audiences across wide-ranging rural venues including the Flicks in the Sticks network of village halls and community centres as well as its two principal venues, The Courtyard in Hereford, and Malvern Theatres.
Recognised by the British Film Institute as being of national significance, with close to 300 screenings of some of the best new cinema from all over the world, including a strong line-up of previews, themed strands addressing contemporary issues, retrospectives, classic and archive films, and documentaries.
Borderlines is the only film festival programmed by the Independent Cinema Office, a charity based in London, which aims to develop an open, challenging and thriving film sector. The Independent Cinema Office works with a comprehensive network of distributors throughout the UK providing Borderlines with a wide roster of films.
Financially, Borderlines is supported by the British Film Institute awarding funds from the National Lottery, by the Elmley Foundation and by Hereford City Council. It also receives significant support from a large number of sponsors, advertisers and supporters, both businesses and individuals, as well as a percentage of ticket income from film screenings.
The best source of current information about the festival is the Archived Festivals page of the website, where you can download past programmes in PDF format.
The Board of Directors
Borderlines is organised as a CIC or Community Interest Company – effectively a not- for-profit business with a social or community purpose. As such, we are run by a Board of directors who are all volunteers with a strong interest in supporting the festival and with a wide variety of backgrounds and experience. The Board is responsible for setting the strategic direction of Borderlines Film Festival in line with its objectives, ensuring its financial soundness and sustainability, and ensuring proper use of the funding it receives.
To plan and deliver the festival, the Board appoints the Festival Director (Naomi Vera-Sanso) and Marketing Manager (Jo Comino) who have both been leading and delivering the festival for many years and are largely responsible for its current great success and extensive growth over the years, together with its impressive reputation. Film programming is contracted to the Independent Cinema Office and design to Elfen.
The Board meets five times a year in a mix of in-person and Zoom meetings. Sub-groups meet between full Board meetings. Board members are drawn from the local area and from further afield. More information below.
Invitation to join the Board
The current Board includes 11 people from a wide range of different professional backgrounds.
Members of the Board take an active role in development and delivery in specific areas of the festival where we would welcome enthusiastic support: these include Open Screen, which offers a showcase for locally made films and film-makers, and Sponsorship and Advertising, where we aim to expand the pool of local businesses and individuals who wish to support Borderlines. The sub-groups which Board members are invited to join include Finance, Personnel, Marketing, Sponsorship, Open Screen, and Volunteers group.
Our aim is to become a truly inclusive organisation with a workforce and audience as diverse as the communities we serve and therefore welcome applications from those who will bring a difference to the Board. We understand that contemporary arts and media can be a closed shop for many. If you are from a background that is under-represented in the arts and cultural sector and you would like to apply to become a director, we encourage you to do so.
We believe we will have greater impact if our organisation represents the region in which we work. To represent the wider region we serve, we especially welcome applications from areas outside of Hereford including Ludlow and Malvern areas where we would like to increase the Borderlines audience.
If you would like to have a conversation with the Chair of our Board in advance of sending in an application, you can do this by email, or over the phone by pre-arrangement.
How to apply
We are committed to appointing directors in a different way. We recognise that there are many barriers for entry into executive leadership in the cultural sector, and we want to make this process as open and supportive as possible.
We are inviting you to apply to be a director by sending some information about yourself, your interest in and suitability for the role, using whichever of the following you are most comfortable with:
- Letter of application (2 x A4 pages max) OR
- Video (3mins max) OR
- Voice memo (3mins max) OR
- PowerPoint presentation of up to ten slides/1,000 words or less
Please ensure your name is given on every page.
Email: steve.freer@borderlinesfilmfestival.co.uk
The closing date for this position is 12/09/2024 at 23:59