Cultural Advocacy Lead - The Guardian : Job Details

Salary: £76, 283

Closing date: Monday, 6 January 2025

Contract type: Permanent

The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation. We improve health for everyone by funding science, leading policy and advocacy campaigns, and building partnerships.

We plan to spend £16bn over the next ten years, funding new discoveries in life, health, and wellbeing, and taking on three global health challenges: mental health, infectious disease and climate and health.

These challenges need the bold science we support, but they won't be solved by science alone.

Where in Wellcome will I be working?

Wellcome's Corporate Affairs team works to build and sustain the trust, influence, reputation, and brand that will help us ensure science works for and with the people we seek to benefit.

We are looking for a Cultural Advocacy Lead to join our newly-formed Creative & Cultural Advocacy Team, which aims to win the hearts and minds of international decision-makers in order to bring about systemic change on global health challenges.

This is a chance to play a key role in shaping how culture can be a powerful tool within ambitious, integrated initiatives that build public support and drive action from decision-makers on issues such as climate change, mental health and infectious disease.

What will I be doing?

Wellcome has a long history of engaging the cultural sector. This is an exciting new role at Wellcome which aims to demonstrate how Wellcome can work with the cultural sector specifically as part of its advocacy activity. It will show how Wellcome can cut through saturated political and media environments, emotionally connect with decision-makers and shift public narratives through compelling story-telling.

As Cultural Advocacy Lead you will build on the work undertaken to date to further develop and implement a strategy that both establishes culture as a key pillar of Wellcome's engagement work and strengthens Wellcome as a valuable sector collaborator in this space.

You will work alongside colleagues across Corporate Affairs, Strategy and Research as part of multi-disciplinary teams to integrate cultural advocacy partnerships into our wider engagement and advocacy work.

As Cultural Advocacy Lead, you will:

• Act as the champion for how cultural advocacy is delivered at Wellcome - inspiring and engaging others about the role culture can play in creating change for health challenges

• Build and manage a set of foundational relationships with key sector stakeholders across the UK and beyond

• Develop and oversee the delivery of ambitious and imaginative initiatives with cultural partners

• Work in partnership with cultural sector partners to catalyse new creative content based on Wellcome's science and research that can build public support and inspire action by decision-makers

• Act as part of the management team and contribute to the effective establishment of the Creative & Cultural Advocacy team - informing how creative approaches can be a powerful tool within advocacy and engagement.

is this role for me?

This is an ideal role for someone who is well-networked within the cultural sector, strategic, and passionate about the role creativity can play in social and political change.

The Cultural Advocacy Lead should be experienced in:

• Sector partnerships and stakeholder management: Demonstrable experience of being able to engage with and inspire cultural sector stakeholders (strategic bodies, sector networks, arts organisations, producers, artists etc), and able to build effective relationships across a wide variety of sectors (subject matter experts, policy and government relations specialists; communications professionals).

• Programme design: Significant experience in designing and delivering impactful, collaborative culture sector initiatives to bring about change.

• Influencing and advocacy: Demonstrable understanding of how change happens politically and socially, together with experience of designing and overseeing strategies to deliver this.

To apply please upload your current CV and complete our short application.

You can view the full job description here.

Our offices will be closed from Friday 20th December until Thursday 2nd January 2025. We will not be able to respond to emails sent to during this time and will reply to any queries on or after Thursday 2nd January 2025.

Our Hybrid way of working.

We understand that our colleagues have commitments and personal interests outside of work and we strive to build a flexible working environment, in which people can perform at their best. We are currently working 3 days per week (Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays) from our Euston Road office with the remaining 2 days from home.

You can read more about the benefits we offer our employees here

Diversity and Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do

Diversity and Inclusion is a priority at Wellcome. We are committed to cultivating a fair and healthy environment, where everyone can be themselves and thrive. We are happy to discuss flexible working options for all roles. We work to ensure that our recruitment processes are as inclusive as possible to everyone. This includes making adjustments for people who have a disability or long-term condition. If you would like us to make adjustments during the application process, please contact us at .

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