Trustees

Salary: Unpaid

The Paper Birds are looking for four new Trustees to lead the company through an important phase in their evolution.

About The Paper Birds

First things first, you can get a great idea of who we are by having a look around our website and watching our short film here.

The Paper Birds are leading British theatre practitioners, with a social and political agenda. We create participatory theatre for social change and are known for our innovative use of verbatim. We are artists, investigators, entrepreneurs, and educators. We have produced 13 shows and won 5 awards since our inception in 2003, including a Fringe First for innovation in new writing. We have an artistic programme and a creative learning programme and nurture both equally.

About the Role

We strive to have an exciting, broad range of voices on our Board, people who share our values and vision and can bring their varying life experience and skills to our work.

In dialogue with our existing Trustees we have identified the below desirable skill sets which we feel are important areas of growth in our ambitious programme of work over the next four years.

Please know that we value lived experience as much as professional experience in our Board members. It may be that an applicant can cover several of the elements we are searching for below, or that an applicant has significant knowledge in just one area – we welcome applications in both scenarios.

No previous Board experience is necessary, as we can provide training and support.

1. Digital Reach and Audience Engagement

We think this might be someone from outside the theatre, or even arts sector, and/or who can bring a different perspective on how we can connect with our audiences e.g. journalism, film, youth engagement. We are looking for someone who can help us develop our reach, accessibility and relevance through a digital lens.

2. Finance

Whilst some of our current Board Members have skills and interest in finance, we don’t have anyone with qualifications in this area. We feel we could benefit significantly from having this knowledge to challenge and support us, particularly given our recent organisational growth.

3. Fundraising

We seek to diversify our range of funders over the next few years, with a particular focus on trusts and foundations and local authority income.

4. Access and Inclusivity

We are motivated to find a Board Member to help us ensure we are an exemplary company to work with and for; who can challenge us to always put our audiences’, participants’ and communities’ needs at the forefront of our thinking. It would be superb if this person also had practical HR and employment knowledge, but this is desirable rather than essential.

5. Youth Sector/Youth Mental Health

Our plans for the next 4 years include a significant amount of activity working with and for young people and artists. We already have data to prove our work builds empathy in young people and want to develop on this going forward to better harness our potential and impact in this area. This Board Member might be from a broad range of backgrounds, including, but not exclusively, social work, community, educational or academic perspective(s).

Applications

Please read the full recruitment pack.

To apply, please submit a short cover letter, setting out your interest, plus relevant knowledge and skills, accompanied by your CV. Please send completed applications to Senior Producer Charlotte Kalantari-Gregory: charlotte@thepaperbirds.com

Charlotte can also provide this document in a large print version. Additionally, we ask all applicants to complete the following anonymous equality and diversity survey here: Monitoring Form

We envisage that we will be recruiting on a rolling basis between January and April 2022. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to meet informally with current Trustees and the Executive team, before shadowing a Board Meeting.

The closing date for this position is 23/04/2022 at 23:59