Project Manager

Project Manager

Salary: £32,000 - £35,000 pa

Role Type: Fixed Term Contract – 1 Year, 40 hours across 5 days per week Mon-Fri

Location: London/Home - UK travel and some evening/ weekend working is required for client facing activity

Office location:  St Bride Foundation, 14 Bride Lane, London, EC4Y 8EQ (Flexible / Hybrid working available)

Annual leave: 25 days + bank holidays

About The Liminal Space

The Liminal Space is a purpose-led creative studio that uses art and design approaches to build understanding, participation and social action.  A combination of a creative agency and a think tank, we are a multidisciplinary team on a mission to empower more people, more profoundly to contribute to greater positive social and health outcomes.

We work with clients and organisations who are excited about taking a new approach to engaging audiences, generating research insights and solving strategic challenges. These include some of the country’s top universities, independent funders and government bodies including organisations such as The Wellcome Trust, Nesta, The Francis Crick Institute, The Health Foundation, The Barbican, The Natural History Museum, UCL and The University of Cambridge. Recent projects have covered topics ranging from mental health in key workers and improving the way NHS teams manage Covid-19 to sustainable shopping, the future of work, the ethics of gene editing and a blueprint for the  museum of the future.

Our work translating some of the toughest issues facing our society into tangible objects, spaces and experiences that people can relate to and interact with has led to us being shortlisted as Emerging Design Studio of the Year 2020 by Dezeen, and receiving a Wellcome Trust Sustaining Excellence grant.

You can find out more about some of the exciting projects we have undertaken on our website

About the Role

We are recruiting a Project Manager on a 1 year Fixed Term contract to help us deliver engaging projects which make a real social impact, in a way that delights our clients and our target groups, whilst coming in on time and on budget. The successful candidate will be responsible for supporting multiple projects in a creative, start-up environment. We are looking for someone who can use their organisational skills, diplomacy, dazzling client engagement, commercial nous and quick thinking to make sure we are creating beautiful and useful things to the highest level in a commercially sustainable way. As a creative agency, we often work in iterative project phases, and therefore a flexible approach comes as standard.

You will be working alongside our friendly, collaborative and committed team of thinkers and doers, and will play a pivotal part in ensuring our work reaches, impacts and empowers audiences.

Key Responsibilities

• Ensure a seamless transition from project development stage through to successful delivery and legacy
• Wow clients with excellent engagement and communication
• Create and update project schedules in line with deliverables
• Work with internal and external stakeholders to ensure deliverable milestones are met on time
• Engage with operational platforms to maintain organisational visibility
• Ensure each project is completed on budget, and report on these to the Finance Team on a regular basis
• Instigate discussions with stakeholders where appropriate around scope creep and resolve resultant cost implications
• Engage with internal Liminal Space teams (such as the Design Team) as well as our Freelance resource to ensure an integrated delivery

About You

• You are great at prioritisation and have a keen attention to detail
• You are a clear and confident communicator who loves providing a fantastic client experience
• You are a confident self-starter who can take initiative and identify solutions
• You are resourceful, flexible and thrive in a pacey and agile work environment
• You are keen to support a company that works to make society better and able to take an interest in the areas we work in
• You are a team player who is interested in working for an agile, growing business, and happy to get stuck in at all levels

Skills and Experience

Essential:

• Proven experience in project management, with a track record of delivery that meets or exceeds targets
• Good financial acumen and experience managing budgets, ensuring accurate financial tracking and forecasting
• Great client relationship management skills, with the ability to build and maintain relationships at all levels, and deliver timely and accurate information that meets client needs and advances relationships
• A proactive attitude and strong problem-solving skills, with the ability to analyse complex issues and develop practical solutions
• Excellent organisational skills, with the ability to prioritise and manage multiple tasks and projects simultaneously
• A commitment to the values and mission of Liminal Space, and a passion for creating innovative and engaging programmes that have a positive impact on society

Experience working in a creative or cultural industry is desirable.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

The Liminal Space is committed to building a diverse and inclusive team and strongly encourages applications from those who experience discrimination and / or prejudice based on their race, ethnicity or immigration status; women; new parents; people with disabilities and LGBTQI+ people.

We welcome conversations with prospective applicants who might find the application process difficult or want to explore what it would be like to work at The Liminal Spaces.  We are available prior to and during the application process.

DEI Aims

We are currently taking action to become a diverse, equitable and inclusive organisation. We are at the beginning of this process, but our goals are as follows:

• To ensure representation of diverse talent
• To strengthen leadership accountability and capability for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)
• To enable equality of opportunity through fairness and transparency:
• To continue to promote openness and tackle discrimination internally and externally
• To foster belonging through unequivocal support for multivariate diversity so that people can bring their full selves to work with The Liminal Space

Progress To Date

We have redesigned our job descriptions to limit the essential skills to those which are truly needed for the role, removing access barriers.  We have diversified our recruitment pathways, advertising in places that reach more diverse audiences and will analyse the impact of this approach. We have introduced more flexible working practices, enabling staff to fit their out-of-work commitments around reduced core working hours.  We are continuing to develop staff policies and processes, to ensure fairness and transparency, for example, around performance reviews, staff pay and recognition.

Within some of our most ambitious and significant programmes of work, we have and will continue to partner with DEI experts to deliver both impact at a strategic level and ensure our activation design and development addresses issues raised by those directly impacted, creating a better outcome for all.  In 2022, it included:

• Co-designing a new DEI advisory function for a major funder, that is truly inclusive, innovative and sustainable; and
• Working with community-specific design experts to help us gain additional insights and better design activations that meet the needs of our key audiences

During 2023, we will focus on further developing our team culture, trying out new approaches to reflection, learning and development and re-visiting our ambitions and plans around accountability and capability for DEI.

The final closing date for applications is Friday 18th August at 17:00.

TO APPLY

Please send your CV and Covering Letter by clicking Apply as soon as you’re able to, as we will be looking at applications as they come through, and may decide to interview candidates before the closing date.  However, we will not close the role before the application deadline.

The selection process will take place in the following stages:

1. Submission of CV and Cover Letter as detailed above
2. A first round interview conducted online
3. A second interview, in-person