NSUN is hiring: Hosted Projects Coordinator

This vacancy is now closed.

Contract: fixed term for 3 years
Salary: £24,000, 4 days per week (FTE £30,000)
Hours: 4 days per week (although enquiries about flexible working are welcome)
Location: remote working in the U.K. (NSUN does not have a physical office. Some occasional travel for team meetings will be required, with expenses covered by NSUN)
Deadline: 5pm, Tuesday 1st March
Interviews: Monday 21st March

As a UK mental health charity, we are a network of people and grassroots groups with lived experience of mental ill-health, distress and trauma. We come together to create, challenge and campaign. NSUN is a user-led organisation, and all staff and trustees have lived experience of mental ill-health, distress or trauma. Over the past 18 months, NSUN has scaled and changed. This is an exciting time to join an organisation which is growing.

From February 2022, NSUN will be hosting Synergi, an ambitious and exciting programme of work at the intersection of mental health and racial justice.

About Synergi

Synergi is a programme of work which focuses on the intersection of racial justice and mental health. In its first phase, which ended in January 2022, Synergi created a knowledge hub, bringing together qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, place-based work, storytelling and network building, in order to reframe, rethink and transform the realities of ethnic inequalities in severe mental illness and multiple disadvantage.

In its second phase, Synergi will be hosted by NSUN, and will be centred on lived experience and community action.

An ambitious and exciting programme of work has been envisioned by Sandra Griffiths from Catalyst4Change and Akiko Hart from NSUN, building on the legacy of the first phase of Synergi. Workstreams will include:

  • Remembrance as Resistance: developing a multimedia and digital exhibition and festival programme that will act as a window to community action tackling mental health and racial injustices over the last 40 years in the UK, to reimagine mental health services and support for racialised communities
  • Democratising Policy: managing an annual small grants programme to distribute to grassroots campaigning groups working on the intersection of racial justice and mental health
  • Building as Abolition: working with and influencing funders to better understand abolitionist work in this space so that it is resourced and elevated
  • Creative Spaces: building on the place-based creative and collaborative work which was developed in the first phase of Synergi
  • Transformative Governance: embedding ethical and collaborative ways of working within Synergi and beyond it

The Hosted Projects Coordinator will be a link between NSUN and Synergi, and to a lesser extent between NSUN and our smaller hosted projects, which include Misery and North East Together. The Hosted Projects Coordinator will also be occasionally seconded to Synergi to support with Synergi’s operations, including to support the annual small grants programme.

The Hosted Projects Coordinator role is about building good governance and strong communicative relationships which will enable the operation of Synergi and other NSUN hosted projects. Enabling Synergi to do effective work at the intersection of mental health and racial justice will require a relationship that is transparent, well-organised and mutually communicative, and which also ensures that Synergi has autonomy and decision-making power separate from NSUN. The right candidate will have an interest in building transparent, equitable processes and structures. They will also be someone who can articulate the links between good governance and anti-racist practice in the charity sector.

NSUN and Synergi are at the very beginning of their work together. To that end, we are keen to employ a motivated, innovative person who can make this role their own and share what they learn during the course of it.

Job description and person specification

Apply

The application form and equality and diversity monitoring form must be completed and returned to info@nsun.org.uk by 5pm, Tuesday 1st March.

Please note that we do not accept CVs/cover letters. Please make sure that all the information about your skills and experience is included in the application form. We recommend you use the full two pages allowed in the “supporting information” section in the application form to explain how you meet each of the points in the person specification.

If you would like to discuss this role in more detail please contact Ruairi White, Project Manager (Community Constellations), by emailing ruairi.white@nsun.org.uk.