Festival of Chichester committee looking for new recruits
As the Festival of Chichester starts planning next summer’s 14th festival, its organisers are looking for new recruits to the festival committee which runs and organises it.
Two key members of the team, Simon O'Hea and Mark Elliott, who have served the festival brilliantly over the years, are stepping down at the end of next year's festival. The festival committee is keen to find newcomers to the committee who can work alongside Simon and Mark over the next few months and learn the ropes from them.
Simon said: “We have got a very stable team, and anybody coming into the festival would be welcomed and looked after and developed. But the fact is that teams do need to find fresh energy and fresh enthusiasm from new people every now and again, and I think this will be a good juncture for us.
“The positions are unpaid which enables us to put all our money into building and developing the festival itself in other ways.”
The first role vacancy is coordination of events.
“This role includes liaising with event organisers to create an effective and cohesive programme of events. It involves liaison with all other stakeholders, including funding bodies, advertisers and sponsors. It includes editing the brochure and liaison with the printers. The role requires an ability to communicate and event plan effectively.”
The second role is physical event marketing and photography.
“This role includes developing a plan to distribute brochures and flyers, organising road signs, banners and posters and organising event photography.”
The third role is IT and marketing.
“This role includes liaising with the festival’s web developers and working with them to enhance the festival’s online offering, maintaining the email and web hosting, managing and updating the website including supporting event organisers through the registration process, managing the email account and communicating by email with the public, (potential) organisers, venues, influencers and (potential) advertisers. The role requires some experience of WordPress and an understanding of hosting and email marketing.
“Each role may involve spending 1-2 hours a week between the launch and the end of the festival, from April to July. In addition, our committee meets on Zoom once a month for 1-2 hours on a Wednesday afternoon throughout the year (except during August).
“If you’re interested in any of these vacancies, please contact our chairman Phil Hewitt directly via [email protected].”
Looking back, Simon has really enjoyed his experience working with the festival and would recommend it to other people: “I think it has been really interesting having the interactions with other committee members and other stakeholders in the festival but from a personal point of view I have learned a lot of new skills. I found it particularly interesting with the online skills that I have kept up to date and the new skills that I have learned. In the seven years that I've been associated with the festival we have had two major redesigns and relaunches of the website, and to go through that has been very interesting in terms of trying to work out what the customer journey needs to be and what would make it work for them.
“But also what I've enjoyed is the whole press process of making a festival, and remember that we managed to do something even through Covid. We were still able to put on a virtual festival of sorts. We are a good organisation.
“I think the festival matters because it harnesses and brings together a lot of the energies and skills of a large number of people around Chichester which is a place which punches above its weight in terms of its ability to put on cultural events whether it's music or walks and talks or the arts. I think the strength of the festival has been that ability to harness all these events and activities and to bring them under one banner, but also hopefully I think the festival has been very good for the economy in terms of the venues and the eateries around the city.”