The Cultural Education Partnership currently has funding from Paul Hamlyn Foundation Teacher Development Fund for ‘THE STORY EXCHANGE’, a partnership project with The Story Museum and local schools. The creative project aims to develop the necessary skills, knowledge and confidence of teachers and artists working together to provide space for improving Emotional Literacy and Pupil Voice in the classroom.

Working together as co-inquirers, our overall aim is to tackle the inquiry question: How can oral story telling and the performing arts support teachers to use stories to improve emotional literacy and pupil voice?

We will be developing a programme of work until the end of August 2025 which:
• Develops a partnership between The Story Museum and at least 6 local schools;

• Shares The Story Museum’s extensive experience of action-research into the benefits of story-based learning for children, young people and teachers;

• Uses oracy as a vital building block for children to become more confident and resilient, and improve their mental health and wellbeing;

• Creates a cohort of active learners including class teachers, middle teachers (subject/year group leads), members of the senior leadership teams, and artists from The Story Museum, who will exchange skills and learn together;

• Embeds the learning from the project into the partner schools curriculum and creates a lasting legacy of oral storytelling in school programmes;

• Focuses on local schools experiencing systemic inequity and disadvantage;

• Invites external experts to share their knowledge and skills with our learning cohort;

• Investigates how to create a digital learning centre that will engage people who are available at different times and in different places with regular shared learning opportunities;

• Cascades the learning from the programme to wider school teams and the Cultural Education Partnership network;

• Seeks partnership investment for the continuation of the programme beyond the pilot period.

The project is managed by a working group consisting of representatives from arts organisations, educational establishments and the six local authorities, reporting to Oxford City Council’s Youth Partnership Board.

We are seeking to appoint a freelance EVALUATOR with experience and knowledge of both the arts and education and who is able to ‘hit the ground running’ on this exciting initiative in Oxfordshire.

EVALUATOR - Key Tasks
• Design, develop and implement an evaluation framework to measure the impact of ‘The Story Exchange’ project, specifically measuring the impact of the programme on teachers, artists and children and young people and their development of new shared skills, oracy skills, emotional literacy, confidence, improved mental health, well-being and resilience;

• Work collaboratively with the project team to develop a methodology which is clear, concise and easy to communicate amongst multiple partners;

• Have a clear understanding of the inquiry question, and fully design, disseminate and collate evaluation materials, that will include written evaluation, photography, film, and other methods of meaningful measurement, for example, the Storytelling Methodology;

• Provide training for partners and support in use of evaluation tools and materials, and support the Project Co-ordinator in collating materials for evaluation;

• Facilitate face-to-face or online evaluation events;

• Contribute towards social media and website content for the project;

• Attend key programme dates where necessary;

• Use an ethical approach, and draw upon previous work and good practice developed in the pilot (for example, using the storytelling evaluation methodology);

• Produce and submit multiple reports, to enable us to explain clearly and accurately the benefits of the programme to a broader range of stakeholders and funders across the arts, health and wellbeing.

FEE/CONTRACT: Up to a maximum of £8,000
Working flexibly to meet the requirements of the brief in specified time period (from August 2023 to August 2025), paid on agreed schedule over the period of the contract.

This work is offered as a freelance contract, for a fixed fee including VAT and all expenses. The appointed individual will be responsible for all tax, national insurance etc.

TO APPLY
Please send a letter of application with an outline of your approach, breakdown budget and two case studies of relevant work that you have previously undertaken. Please include your experience and suitability for the post along with a CV and two references.
If there is more than one application for the role, the successful candidate will be appointed based on how well their application supports the requirements of the key skills.

Applications should be submitted to: ktoomey@oxford.gov.uk by the deadline

CLOSING DATE: 12pm, Monday 7 August 2023

APPOINTMENT DATE: Friday 18th August 2023

START DATE: ASAP following appointment