£20 – £25,000 depending on experience, Full-time
This is a unique opportunity to join an award-winning, global project that is making waves in the digital, cultural heritage and community sectors through its innovative approach. If you think you have what it takes to join this dedicated, forward-thinking team, read on…
About us
Historypin is a way for millions of people to come together, from across different generations, cultures and places, to share small glimpses of the past and to build up the huge story of human history. Whether from archives around the world or shoe boxes in attics, we’re finding new ways to share, collaborate, and participate in local and global history.
Historypin was created by the not-for-profit company We Are What We Do, and was developed in a unique partnership with Google. We now have over 1,000 institutional partners sharing content on Historypin, including libraries, archives, museums, schools, historical societies, commercial archives, and community groups; not to mention over 45,000 individual members.
About the role
Historypin Project Officers (POs) work under the leadership of the Operations Director (London), and are supported by our creative team (London) and Strategic Partnerships Director (San Francisco). We take an entrepreneurial approach to our programs and POs have the opportunity to grow and expand their programs based on their own ideas and insights. We have a growing portfolio of projects focused on specific themes or places and POs support the day to day running of these. This includes liaising with stakeholders and working with a wide range of individual and institutional partners. POs are responsible for supporting the outreach, marketing, publicity, and social media channels related to their projects, as well as assisting with the evaluation of projects.
Community engagement is part of all our work and POs will be responsible for helping to design and run innovative on the ground activities. These will include “pinning events” where people share their content and memories with the world and any number of different people have the chance to interact with each other.
While POs work directly in the field, they’re also able to use this experience to help us build better in-person and digital tools to share, digitize, and discover history. Historypin is working with a large number of academic and community partners to create the best ways for people to collaborate through local history, and build stronger communities to boot. Our POs are on the front lines of some of the most cutting edge research in cultural heritage today, and play an active role in that creative process. POs will be involved in the research, testing and design of new Historypin tools to enable collaborative storytelling and solving mysteries in photos.
Our team works in a creative, global environment, and we seek self-motivated leaders. As part of a small and dynamic non-profit, POs have a diverse set of responsibilities and will further develop skills including community engagement, project management, and user interaction/user experience design. We apply a start-up mentality to the field of cultural heritage, and embrace fun new ways of engaging with history. Behind the scenes tours of the most venerable historical institutions of the world? Check. Pinning dusty old photos to a map in a pub and hearing the hilarious or heartbreaking stories behind them? Check.
Essential requirements
- Experience in work with community groups, senior citizens and/or school children.
- Passion for public history, community engagement and innovative technologies.
- Quick learner willing to get stuck in with a variety of tasks.
- Well organized and able to juggle multiple projects happening at once.
- Excellent written and verbal communications skills.
Desirable requirements
- Project management experience.
- Experience of working on digital projects.
- Understanding and experience of user testing with digital tools and offline resources.
- Experience of working with cultural heritage organisations.
- Experience of the management and development of social media channels.
Main responsibilities
Historypin Projects
- Assist the Historypin Operations Director with the delivery of Historypin Projects including liaising with partners, preparing content and supporting their publicity.
- Support individuals, community groups, educators, and cultural heritage organisations to use Historypin tools.
- Assist the Historypin Operations Director to undertake user consultation to inform the development of new Historypin tools and programmes.
Community
- Design, organise, and deliver Historypin photo and story collecting sessions with community groups, care homes and schools.
- Support schools and community organisations to run their own sessions.
- Expand our resource toolkit for communities and schools.
User testing
Assist in the design of online and offline experiments to explore how you can invite the community to collaboratively solve mysteries in photos such as date and location. Manage the implementation and analysis of these experiments.
Support the Historypin team to create and run user tests to inform the iterative design of new digital collaborative and storytelling tools.
Social media
- Assist in managing, maintaining, and enhancing Historypin’s social media channels.
Additional responsibilities
- Manage general inquiries.
- Testing and bug reporting.
- Upload content from partners.
- Monitor online and offline Historypin activity and create case studies.
- Engage new cultural heritage and community organisations.
How to apply
Please send a one page cover letter and a two page CV to rebecka.mustajarvi@wearewhatwedo.org. As we are recruiting for two PO posts, please state whether you are applying for the London or San Francisco post.
Deadline: Friday 19 April 2013
Interviews: These will be held week commencing 29 April. Shortlisted candidates will be contacted prior to this.
Start date: Late May
See http://wearewhatwedo.org/historypin-project-officer-london-uk/ for full details.