Participation Director

Overview

Our client is seeking an experienced Participation Director to lead national engagement, participation, and audience development activity across a major public sector heritage environment.

This is a full-time, permanent role offering hybrid working from home and one of several UK office locations, including Newcastle, York, Manchester, Birmingham, Swindon, Bristol, Portsmouth, London, or Cambridge.

The successful candidate will develop and embed strategies and programmes that help people across England discover, connect with, and participate in heritage. This senior leadership role will focus on increasing public engagement, strengthening partnerships, improving access to national collections and programmes, and embedding inclusive, audience-led practice across participation activity.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development and delivery of participation, engagement, and audience-focused strategies and programmes.

• Oversee nationally significant archive, learning, community engagement, inclusion, grant, and public participation programmes.

• Lead multidisciplinary teams to increase engagement with heritage and the historic environment.

• Embed inclusive practice, social impact, co-creation, and audience-led approaches across programmes.

• Build strong partnerships with communities, stakeholders, cultural organisations, and sector partners.

• Use storytelling, capacity building, and collaborative approaches to connect more people and places with heritage.

• Contribute to the senior leadership team, helping shape national engagement and participation activity.

• Work with senior colleagues to support strategic priorities, government priorities, public impact, and income generation opportunities.

• Collaborate with communications, marketing, digital, philanthropy, and income development teams to strengthen public recognition and audience reach.

• Represent the organisation with internal and external stakeholders, including senior leaders and community partners.

• Support culture change, organisational development, and effective cross-functional collaboration.

Requirements

• Experience leading multidisciplinary teams within a participatory engagement discipline.

• Proven experience creating and delivering integrated engagement activity within an arts, culture, heritage, public engagement, or related setting.

• Experience delivering projects involving community-led approaches and co-creation with communities.

• Track record of initiating and leading projects within a strategic framework.

• Excellent leadership and people management skills, including experience supporting culture change.

• Strong strategic thinking skills, with the ability to translate vision into practical delivery.

• Strong stakeholder engagement, partnership-building, and influencing skills.

• Commitment to inclusion, diversity, accessibility, and social impact.

• Ability to operate effectively at senior leadership level in a complex, multi-stakeholder environment.

Benefits

• Salary of £73,000 per annum.

• Full-time, permanent contract.

• Hybrid working from home and one of multiple UK office locations.

• Competitive defined benefit pension scheme with significant employer contributions.

• 28 days’ annual leave.

• Corporate discounts.

• Free entry to relevant heritage sites across the country.

• Development opportunities to support professional growth.

• Inclusive and flexible working culture.

• Consideration of flexible working options, including job share, part-time working, compressed hours, and different working locations where appropriate.

• Support for reasonable adjustments for candidates with disabilities or neurodiversity.

Application Process

Applications will involve submitting a CV and cover letter of up to 500 words.

Applications will be assessed against the role criteria, including leadership of multidisciplinary teams, experience in participatory engagement, delivery of integrated engagement activity, community-led project delivery, strategic project leadership, leadership and management skills, culture change experience, and strategic thinking.

Our client is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes applications from candidates of all backgrounds. They are committed to inclusion, diversity, wellbeing, flexible working, and creating a fair recruitment process.

Candidates may be asked to answer application questions designed to assess their skills, suitability, and experience. Provisional virtual interviews are scheduled for 30 July 2026.

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Participation Director