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21 Feb 25 | Job & Opportunities
The Leys Festival – Associate Producer call out
We are looking for an experienced and confident Freelance Associate Producer to work with us on The Leys Festival, taking place in Blackbird Leys on 5th July 2025.
THE LEYS FESTIVAL is a festival of creativity, culture, and community, created and planned by over 60 residents and community organisers from The Leys (Blackbird Leys and Greater Leys) alongside a small team from Oxford University’s Cultural Programme. Routed in the principles of Cultural Democracy, the festival reflects the people, stories, and creativity of Blackbird Leys.
Relaunched last year, the 2024 Leys Festival welcomed over 4,000 visitors to Blackbird Leys Park. Watch a video about the day here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqEnJhhGu9U
About the role:
Working alongside lead facilitator Erica Whyman (Royal Shakespeare Company), the Producer will understand and embed co-creation within their practice, supporting community-led decision making to ensure that the festival is accessible, inclusive, and shaped by the people it is for. The role will require close collaboration with residents, local organisations, artists, funders, and businesses alongside the University.
The Producer will need to:
- Work with the community to co-create the festival programme, ensuring residents, artists, and organisations are meaningfully involved in shaping and delivering events.
- Work closely with Erica Whyman to ensure co-creation remains at the heart of the festival.
- Oversee festival logistics and delivery, including booking venues, hiring equipment, and managing suppliers and contracts (in line with university processes and requirements)
- Develop and manage the festival budget, working with the finance team to track spending and secure additional funding where needed
- Manage fundraising and sponsorship, including identifying and applying for grants, securing local sponsorship, and exploring in-kind support
- Work with the Marketing and Comms team to ensure the website is updated and festival promotion aligns with the co-creative approach
- Coordinate volunteers and event staff, ensuring they are well-supported and integrated into the festival’s planning and delivery
- Ensure all health & safety, risk assessments, and legal requirements are met, including licences and insurance
- Lead on festival subgroups shaped by the community, ensuring they have clear objectives and are effectively contributing to the festival’s development
- Co-ordinate the steering group meetings leading up to the festival, ensuring key stakeholders remain engaged and informed
- Evaluate the festival’s impact, gathering feedback and insights to inform future years.
We anticipate that this will be in the region of 60 days’ work between March – July 2025, with increasing commitment closer to the festival.
If you are interested in this role and have the relevant experience, please send your CV and a brief cover note to – culturalprogramme@humanities.ox.ac.uk by 5pm on Monday 4th March.
Please indicate your day rate / total fee in the cover note and include “Leys Festival Associate Producer” in the subject line.
Cultural Programme, Humanities Division, University of Oxford
The Cultural Programme brings together university, local and global cultural communities in a physical and digital arts centre, powered by the University of Oxford’s research. We promote broad engagement with the riches of the humanities by working with outstanding artists, writers and thinkers from around the world to create and present world-class arts and culture. Innovative and diverse, and delivered across music, theatre, dance, film and visual arts our programmes will be delivered in collaboration with university, local, national and international partners.
At the heart of our vision lies our commitment to:
- Creativity – unlocking new forms of digital authorship, imagination and participation
- People – empowering individuals and communities to generate and explore new forms of knowledge and experience and to become leaders in their own fields and disciplines
- Planet — we want to be connected locally, regionally and globally, in the most environmentally sustainable ways possible
- Innovation – advancing cutting-edge research methodologies in the arts and humanities at the interface of new technologies and digital media
Currently working offsite, from 2026, the Cultural Programme will be located within the Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. The Schwarzman Centre will bring together seven of the faculties in the Humanities Division, an Institute for Ethics in AI and a multi-disciplinary cultural centre containing Oxford’s first purpose-built concert hall as well as further spaces for music, theatre, spoken word, literature, digital, film and exhibitions. As well as working in the new spaces of the Schwarzman Centre, the Cultural Programme will continue to deliver an offsite programme.
The Schwarzman Centre is a unique proposition bringing together a broad spectrum of academic and artistic disciplines teaching, research and public engagement including through arts and culture. The humanities embrace all the academic and artistic disciplines which together help us to develop our understanding of what it means to be human.
For more information, please visit https://oxfordculturalprogramme.org.uk.
21 Feb 25