Senior Culture Officer

About Southwark:

Southwark is a large, ambitious and progressive council with a ‘can do’ attitude and enviable reputation. As a Council, we are successful, passionate and forward-thinking. We are committed to our ‘Fairer Futures for All’ promise which ensures that our residents and businesses are central to everything we do. If you want to make a difference at a local level, apply to Southwark Council today.

The Role:

We are recruiting a Senior Culture Officer to manage a range of projects as part of the council’s Cultural Strategy. You will take on a leading responsibility for maintaining relationships with partners, stakeholders and the borough’s cultural sector, all of whom support the successful delivery of the strategy. Key to the role will be the management of our Culture Together grants programme, which aims to help Southwark cultural organisations achieve meaningful change towards inclusivity and representation.

You will also manage a small team and ensure the work of that team pro-actively embodies the Council’s Southwark Stands Together commitments to tackling racism, under-representation, and inequality through the delivery of our culture services.

About you:

You will have extensive knowledge of the culture sector and creative industries and be able to champion the wider benefits of culture for diverse local communities. You may not previously have worked in local government, but you will have a working knowledge of the role of local government in supporting the cultural sector and creative industries and in improving residents’ access to culture and creative activity. You will have proven project management or producing experience and a good understanding of the complexities that inform grant-making and commissioning best practice.

We are looking for someone who is motivated and motivating, who is resilient and able to work at pace, and who is passionate about supporting sector change and recovery.

Recruitment Timetable:

Interviews: 21 February 2023 and 24 February 2023.

We are an organisation who is passionate about our people and understands that richness of diversity is a requirement to provide the best possible services to our communities. This is demonstrated through our council-wide ambitious commitment to tackle racial inequality in our communities and workforce through our Southwark Stands Together initiative. We particularly welcome applications from members of the Black, Asian and ethnic minority communities to increase representation at senior management level in the Council.