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Freelance Contract for a Team or Creative Company, Northern Heartlands

  •  North East
  •  £15k-20k
  •  Part time
  •  Closes September 22, 2025
  •  Lyndsey Middleton
  •  info@northernheartlands.org
  • #Combined arts

Description

Job Summary

We're seeking a creative team to co-design and deliver a 10-month youth-led arts programme in Shildon, Co Durham, capturing young people's voices & visions for the future. Art forms may include film, photography, visual art, performance, and events.

Job Description

We are looking for an arts team to deliver a creative programme of work with children & young people (CYP) in Shildon, Co Durham between December 2025 - October 2026. The project will influence the next phase of activity (2026-28) of a 10-year heritage programme. The commissioned team may work in any artform - we're looking for innovative and exciting ideas that will enable young participants to articulate their responses to the place they live in, its heritage and their hopes and dreams for the future. Supported by our team at Northern Heartlands, you will identify and work with groups of children & young people (CYP) through a range of creative engagement opportunities, some of which will be with existing groups and clubs.

Activity will include a series of drop-in workshops, the co-creation of a shared artwork that articulates the views of children and young people, further in-depth sessions developing heritage skills with smaller groups and a final high-quality piece (performance/ document/film/exhibition) to share with stakeholders.

Total fee available: £18,600 (inc VAT) plus materials (up to £6,000), travel (up to £1,000) and access support (up to £500). Exact delivery times to be negotiated with potential participant groups, but it is expected that planning time at the start and preparation of the final event will be factored in to the timescale. The project will need to have completed at the latest by October 2026.

For more info visit: https://www.northernheartlands.org/artist-call-outs

Job Requirements

The commissioned team may be an arts organisation, artists' collective or a group of individual freelance practitioners working together (please include one named point of contact in your proposal).

We are looking for creative responses to the brief in, but not limited to, the following art forms:

  • Filmmaking
  • Photography
  • Visual art
  • Exhibitions & events
  • Performance

We are looking for responses to the brief that might be inspired by, but not exclusively, the following ideas:

  • Ingenuity, invention and new ideas
  • Pushing boundaries, taking risks, and daring to dream
  • Adventure, bringing people and places closer together through time and space, exploring new worlds

We are open to a combination of these and other approaches to realise the brief.

Job Responsibilities

The commissioned creative team will:

  • Deliver high quality creative activity for and with children and young people that celebrates heritage and inspires futures
  • Deliver drop-in engagement activity to gather children & young people's voices and experiences of Shildon's heritage (past, present and future)
  • Create and post-produce a high quality artwork that represents the views and ideas of children & young people who've taken part in the above engagement activity
  • Deliver more in depth 'documentary'/heritage related skills workshops with a small number of groups
  • Create a high quality work/document/film
  • Collaborate with PlaceLab: Shildon to realise a celebration and/or sharing of the final artwork. In Summer / early Autumn 2026, the artwork / activity will be shared with the commissioner (Durham County Council), their advisory group and our funders (National Lottery Heritage Fund and ACE

Useful Links

How to Apply

An online 'find out more' session will be held on 16 September at 3:00 pm for 1.5 hours. Check on the Northern Heartlands website for details (https://www.northernheartlands.org/artist-call-outs).
To respond to the brief, please send the following:
Up to 2 pages A4 or 5 minutes video/audio:
● Outlining your response and proposed approach to the brief
● Timeline
● Budget
In a separate document please also attach:
● Information about the team including skills and experience (e.g. names & roles, website links, 2-3 examples of relevant projects)
● Name and contact details of 2 referees ( we won’t contact referees before appointing)

Email application to [email protected] by 12:00 noon, Monday 22 September 2025, with Place Lab Shildon Proposal in the subject line.

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