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Job description

ROLE: Freelance Curator for Heritage Exhibition or Content Developer

TIMESCALE: April 2023 – February 2024

LOCATION: Kingston Upon Thames

METHOD OF WORKING: Remote, but sessions of in person training and meeting attendance required

DEADLINE TO APPLY: 9am 11TH April 2023
INTERVIEWS: w/c 16thApril

STARTING DATE: end April 2023

FEE: £7500 total fee (plus VAT), supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund

This fee is for writing content for the project outputs and for travel to Kingston to meet with the AMP team and Heritage Collective Youth Board.

There is an additional separate budget for the Design Consultant.

The project will provide a separate budget for build and print of displays, or heritage pop-ups.

There may be additional budget for extra training delivered by the Curator or Content Writer to the young people and volunteers involved in the project to support the research and writing exhibition panels if a proposal of additional training is made which can be led by the consultant.

ABOUT CREATIVE YOUTH:

Creative Youth is a charity based in Kingston, London. As the name implies, it was born out of an ambition to encourage and celebrate the creativity of young people – which we define as ages 5 to 26. Creative Youth is currently at an exciting period of transition of growth, as we look towards opening our new creative space - currently known as FUSEBOX – in March 2023. We are currently developing five areas of creative activity within the charity:

1) FUSE International - an annual arts festival formerly known as International Youth Arts Festival. FUSE International takes place in venues including Rose Theatre, Market Square, Kingston University, Kingston College and much more.

2) Creative Talent Programme - providing year-round support to emerging young artists entering into the creative industries.

3) Young People Skills Development Programme - a year-round programme focused on developing young people’s experience within the arts, including work experience, internships and volunteering.

4) Creative Youth Connects - local and community projects, including all work with schools and youth groups. This is where the AMP Kingston project sits.

5) FUSEBOX -we are opening a new creative and community space on Kingston’s riverside in the March 2023.

ABOUT AMP KINGSTON:

With young people, this project is an exploration of Kingston’s music heritage from the 1960s – 1990s. This heritage will be identified, recorded and accessed in a range of interactive, sustainable ways. Through uncovering this heritage, AMP not only explores some of the most iconic musical acts of the late twentieth century, but celebrates pop fashion, costumes, album artwork, band posters and more.

Three themes have been identified:

●  Art - the rise of artwork in branding and logos for music artists.

●  Music - the musicians and artists themselves but also the promoters who

enabled their performances to be seen

●  Pop Fashion - the influence of pop fashion in relation to the creation of

musical personas and identities.

These will be presented and recorded through a series of exhibitions, pop-ups, young person-led creative interpretation and programming. The form of these will be decided and shaped by the young people involved but could include gigs, fashion shows, exhibitions etc. We will build an online resource where the heritage can be housed digitally, a submission to local archives and an online toolkit for young people to use to interpret the heritage.

Led by Creative Youth, but delivered in partnership with the AMP youth board for the project; known as the Heritage Collective. Other key partners include: Kingston Musuem, Kingston History Centre, Kingston University, Kingston College, Anstee Bridge, Achieving for Children (Piper Active Youth Club) and The Community Brain.

FREELANCE BRIEF:
AMP Programme manager is seeking applications for a Freelance Curator or Exhibition Content Developer to work in a very collaborative way with the AMP team and Heritage Collective Youth board. The AMP team want to develop a series of creative interpretation displays and pop-ups working with young people involved in the project. This will be to deliver the National Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England supported AMP Kingston: Art, Music and Pop Fashionproject.

The successful Curator or Content Consultant should have a basic understanding of the time period of Art, Fashion and Music between the 1960’s and 1990’s to enable them to develop the content. They will be willing to listen and work collaboratively with the Heritage Youth Collective and AMP team. The AMP team includes a Researcher and will also include an Exhibition Designer from April 2023. The role will be to find ways to explore the young people’s ideas and working with the AMP team to deliver and prepare content based on creative responses to the AMP research and 22 oral history interviews. The key responsibility will be to take research from the AMP researcher and develop content from the research such as source images or write text to deliver to the AMP designer. They will support the AMP team in considering ways to present and share the research being collected to encourage new and further engagement with the public. At times they may need to support a specific part of researching themselves to create the content for panels.

The consultant may have had previous experience in creating content for festival pop-up displays, museum displays, exhibitions or touring pop-ups.

Key deliverables:

● Work with the AMP team and Heritage Collective to support a refresh or to add in additional display elements to the recent Kingston Museum Bowie exhibition which is opening on 30th March. The content and development work for this will be carried out between April and July 2023. The display will close mid-September 2023.

● To train the AMP team and Heritage Collective Youth board in taking research and writing engaging content to be developed into small scale displays. They will support the writing several panel or more celebrating the AMP project in FUSEBOX.

● Support the content writing for a unique display or showcase presenting the research and artist interventions at the July FUSE International Festival at Kingston.

● To take responsibility for preparing the content and writing the panels for a touring pop-up exhibition to tour at local venues between end of November 2023 to end of February 2024.

● From December 2023 to February 2023 have an awareness of website content and be willing to create elements of content based on the research for the design of web pages bringing together all the elements of the AMP project. All web design, content and research will be provided externally to this contract.

● Be flexible and willing to meet in person at Kingston or at times online with our Heritage Collective youth board and AMP team.

● Ensure that the project is delivered in accordance with the project deliverables, funder aims and objectives.

● Be willing to work with the wider team including the Heritage Collective Youth Board, AMP team, evaluation consultant and exhibition design consultant.

● Show previous experience in delivering National Heritage Lottery Fund supported projects or writing content for similar exhibition or pop-up display projects.

● There is resource budget to pay for the refresh of the exhibition, Festival showcase and touring pop-up. This budget is separate to the fee of the content consultant.

Project Managed by:
Programme Manager of AMP Kingston; Art, Music and Pop Fashion

Key relationships include: AMP Researcher, AMP Project Manager, AMP trainee project manager and Exhibition Designer.

HOW TO APPLY:

Please provide a CV and a tender document responding to the brief including any images of previous experience outlining your response to the brief and how your experience will effectively support this delivery. Please indicate how many days you can offer based on the tender fee. Key time periods for the project are April to July and Sept to November.

There may be additional budget for extra training delivered by the Curator or Content Writer to the young people and volunteers involved in the project to support the research and writing exhibition panels. If a proposal of additional hybrid training is made which would support the project and can be led by the consultant extra budget may be able to be released. This would include how to research for a display and how to prepare content.

We are willing to work in new and exciting ways so please think creatively when preparing the brief. We are keen to encourage you to share content and creative methods of displays and exhibitions to see ideas and past experience coming through on the tender. We are especially interested in any experience of content created f projects that have been lead or delivered or involved young people. Key to this tender is a willingness to share ideas with the Heritage Collective Youth board and work collaboratively with the AMP team.

Tender responses should be sent to [email protected] by 9am on 11th April 2023. Interviews will take place on the w/c 16th April, likely 18thor 19th April but some flexibility offered.

The Freelance consultant is responsible for their own tax implications and should state their understanding of this within the tender brief.

PROJECT DETAIL AND HERITAGE THEMES:

AMP Kingston is focusing on the rich and varied music heritage of Kingston borough from the 1960’s to the 1990’s, placing young people at the front and centre when it comes to the shaping, planning, delivery and engagement of this project. This time period was full of charismatic and entertaining advances in artwork, music and pop fashion. This includes the psychedelic album artwork cover for Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which they played tracks from during their gig at Kingston Poly in 1967 and the rise of the producer/manager role such as Tony Defries which saw bands and musicians being programmed into the gig circuit across South West London, including Kingston and of course, David Bowie’s first performance as Ziggy Stardust at the Toby Jug pub in Hook, which took the notion of using fashion and costuming to create a musical persona.

AMP Kingston is a response to continued interest in music heritage, within the borough and beyond. Due to the nature of live music, much of its history is anecdotal in form and therefore can be difficult to access and use; we will make use of Oral Histories to record this heritage.

The music heritage we will explore will be focused around three key themes;

● Artwork - Kingston is home to the prolific Kingston Art School and this has had a profound effect on the number of creative people residing in the borough. There is a long standing relationship between art and music, with the branding of musicians becoming synonymous with their success, which is something we would like to explore further. For example, the hot lips logo of the Rolling Stones which has become an iconic representation of the band, reflecting both their musical style and their attitudes.

● Music - Live Performance and Promotion: Outside of some further, more detailed heritage uncovering on live music in the 60’s and 70’s, the 80’s and 90’s bring with it the possibility to uncover heritage in a number of exciting new music genre’s including Punk, New Wave, Folk and Electronic music. In addition to this, we are keen to uncover heritage surrounding the role of the promoter/manager/booker and how this pivotal stepping stone between the musicians and venues was breached and how some of this history could help to breach the current challenges faced by both musicians and venues in terms of live music history having a legacy.

● Pop Fashion - Outside of Ziggy Stardust and Bowie’s creation of another worldly persona for his music, there are a number of inherent, interesting links between fashion and music. The rise of the Punk movement was particularly prominent throughout Kingston in the later 1970’s and 1980’s, with bands such as Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Vibrators performing in the borough and their identities through clothing, hair, make up and accessories forming a key part of their personas. Between the 60’s and early 90’s, the New Romantic movement is also a key consideration when looking at music and fashion.

Job Type: Freelance

Salary: £7,500.00 per year

Benefits:

• Flexitime
• Work from home

Schedule:

• Flexitime

Experience:

• exhibition content development: 5 years (required)

Work Location: Hybrid remote in Kingston Upon Thames

Application deadline: 11/04/2023
Expected start date: 24/04/2023