Visitor Experience Assistant - August 2022

Letter from the Head of Finance & Operations

Hello,

Thank you very much for your interest in working at People’s History Museum in our Visitor Experience team!

Here at People’s History Museum, we welcome a local, national, and international audience and our visitors are firmly at the heart of everything we do. We are passionate about the contribution our brilliant Visitor Experience team makes in ensuring that they have an interesting, stimulating, engaging visit that inspires them to get involved with and explore ideas worth fighting for.

The team of nine, plus one Buildings and Visitor Experience Manager, is also central to all of the museum’s day-to-day public-facing operations – you’d be helping to look after the building, working with colleagues throughout the museum, supporting the engagement team with learning activities and tours, the venue hire team with events, and the Retail Supervisor with the museum shop.

If you’d like to find out more about the museum and our work, you can visit our website – but please note that your application and interview aren’t a test of how much you know about us!

We know how much time and effort applications can take, so we have tried to make the application process as straightforward and clear as possible. Please do let us know if there is anything that we could improve on going forward. I look forward to hearing from you and wish you the best of luck with your application.

Best wishes,

Chrissy Davison

Head of Finance & Operations

About us

People’s History Museum (PHM) is the national museum of democracy, telling the story of its development in Britain: past, present, and future. We provide opportunities for people of all ages to learn about, be inspired by and get involved in ideas worth fighting for; ideas such as equality, social justice, co-operation, and a fair world for all.

The museum welcomes a local, national and international audience (totalling 125,000 people each year), as well as reaching people online through our digital activities. We are keen to involve audiences and communities in all aspects of our work and to use models of co-curation, collaboration and crowd-sourcing when developing and delivering our programmes. Engaging people directly in the work of the museum helps to build a passionate and committed audience who become supporters and advocates for PHM, while also ensuring we are representative of many different communities and able to provide an inclusive space for their voices, their stories and their ideas.

Over the next few years our innovative programme led approach will be exploring some important subjects and issues relevant to us all today including migration (extended into 2021) and disabled people’s rights and activism (in 2022).

PHM has an annual turnover of c.£1.5 million, employs around 40 members of staff and has a team of freelance staff, community programme team members, and volunteers. PHM is funded by Arts Council England as a National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) and by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) Culture and Social Impact Fund. These two core funders provide a combined total of 50% of the museum’s funding, which is further supported by trust and foundation fundraising, individual giving, sponsorship and its wholly owned subsidiary, the National Museum of Labour History Trading Company, which operates the running of the shop, cafe and venue hire service.

The museum is an independent museum, charitable trust and company limited by guarantee. It has a Board of Trustees as well as a Trading Company Board and an Audit and Risk Committee.

In early 2020 the museum celebrated the tenth birthday of its new building being opened (as well as marking thirty years in Greater Manchester) and began the process of developing a new vision, mission and strategy for its next decade. That work may have been interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, but we still have ambitious plans for the coming years – to scale-up our work, to reach larger and more diverse audiences, to deliver on a national and international level, to push ourselves with digital technology and to achieve an even bigger impact for our audiences and communities through all that we do.

In 2021 PHM will continue to recover from and respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has had an ongoing impact on audience engagement, income streams and online engagement. The museum has so far responded with resilience and creativity; continuing to be committed to community collaboration and cocuration. Emergency funding and support has been crucial and there will continue to be a job to do in securing income in the short, medium and long term.

The museum team has been looking ahead to create shared business plans 2022-23, as well as thinking about the bigger picture and a clear shared vision for the impact that PHM wants to make on the world. An Impact report produced to mark PHM’s tenth birthday can be found here.

Job description

Visitor Experience Assistant

Salary/grade:  £18,887 (pro rata) (& pension contribution)

Hours of work:  Contracted 7 or 14 hours per week (Saturday & Sunday), with potential for overtime during busy periods and events

Annual leave:  24 days per year (pro rata)

Contract:  Permanent

Responsible to:  Visitor Experience & Buildings Manager and Visitor Experience Supervisors

Location:  People’s History Museum, Left Bank, Spinningfields

Main role responsibilities

Working within a team of Visitor Experience Assistants and Supervisors, your visitor-facing role connects closely to PHM’s vision of being the ‘go-to’ place for learning about, getting involved in and being inspired by ideas worth fighting for. You’ll provide an engaging experience and exceptional level of service for visitors and proactively contribute to the museum’s trading activities and upkeep of its buildings.

This will include:

Supporting visitor experience and engagement with the museum’s collections and exhibitions, learning activities and events through:

• Providing an informed and engaged welcome as the first point of contact for visitors
• Responding confidently and appropriately to visitor enquiries, comments, complaints and access requirements
• Having up-to-date knowledge of the museum’s programme, mission and values and being pro-active in sharing this information with the public
• Carrying out routine patrols of galleries, regularly checking radios, monitors and reporting problems
• Delivering gallery tours
• Assisting with educational visits and school bookings
• Reporting visitor feedback as required, both formally through the museum’s impact and evaluation activities and informally

Supporting the museum’s trading operations and general operational activities through:

• Encouraging charitable giving
• Reception, shop and telephone duties, including till, credit card machine and cash handling
• Assistance for venue hire provision, including set up of equipment
• Cleaning and housekeeping tasks in galleries, offices and external areas
• Maintaining the highest standards of security and safety of the museum building and contents, and reporting problems with displays and buildings, potential security threats, and suspicious activity

Experience, knowledge and skills

 We are looking for a candidate who can demonstrate experience, knowledge and skills across the following

Criteria, with the opportunity for ongoing training and development to support the successful candidate once in post.

How to apply

 To apply, please use this link to complete our online application form. If you require the application form in an alternative format, please contact Charlie Corkin by emailing charlie.corkin@phm.org.uk

Each application will be assessed against the criteria for the roles, as published in this document.

You will be able to detail any access needs or if you would like us to consider you for 7 hours per week or 14 hours per week on the application form.

The closing date for applications is Wednesday 14 September 2022 at 9.00am. Interviews will be held in the week commencing 26th September 2022.

We endeavour to hold interviews in person but arrangements can be made to hold the interviews via Zoom.

If you have any questions regarding your application, or would like to arrange a chat to discuss the role, please contact Charlie using the above email address.

Questions

In the online form you will be prompted to answer the four questions below. All examples and

experience can be taken from your work, education or personal life.

1. Please tell us about a time you have worked effectively as part of a team (max 300 words)
2. Please tell us about a time you have communicated information clearly and effectively to someone else (this can be formally or informally, and to an individual or a larger audience)
3. Please choose two of the main role responsibilities (see above) and tell us about any relevant experience, knowledge or skills you have that will help you fulfil these responsibilities (this doesn’t have to be direct experience of similar tasks, and could be knowledge or skills you have acquired during your education or in any workplace or non-workplace setting) (max 300 words)
4. All staff take part in a working group for one of People’s History Museum’s organisational priorities, detailed below. Please let us know which of these priorities you would like to contribute to if appointed and why. Briefly outline your interest, or what perspective or experience, skills and knowledge you might bring (max 300 words)

Priority one: Access and inclusion

We will live our vision of a fairer society by further deepening the museum’s commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion and by striving to be the most accessible and inclusive physical, sensory and digital museum we can be.

Priority two: Environmental impact

We will use our stories of environmental activism to take a lead in inspiring people to use their voices and actions for greater environmental justice and better understand the museum’s environmental impact and create an action plan to be zero carbon by 2038 in line with Greater Manchester targets.

Priority three: Digital transformation

We will fully embrace digital technology to shape audience experiences and help inspire positive action, reaching more and different people through online exchange, hybrid events and live-stream learning activities.

Equity

PHM prides itself on being a welcoming and inclusive organisation, profoundly committed to advancing equality and diversity in the broadest sense. We value the benefits that diverse perspectives bring to PHM’s work for people of all ages to learn about, be inspired by and get involved in ideas worth fighting for; ideas such as equality, social justice, co-operation, and a fair world for all.

We recognise we currently under-represent Black people and People of Colour, disabled, and LGBTQ+ people and those with intersecting identities in our workforce. PHM is actively working to address this and encourages applications from these backgrounds. While the successful candidate will be selected purely on merit, in the event of a tie between two candidates with equal experience, we may select a candidate who helps us better represent the communities the museum serves.