The Festival of Diversity – being run out of an office at the Oldham Coliseum Theatre – is looking for a ‘digital expert’ to facilitate the production of new digital content and advise the Festival team on their ‘digital development potential’.

What’s involved

The ‘DigiExpert’ role is to work with participants to create and manage digital content for ‘DigiDebates’, which is one part of the ‘DigiVersity’. The project will also reach wider audiences through people engaging with the online material created.

Two groups of people will meet in March to debate over a chosen topic, provisionally a group of people from the Youth Council and Age Concern. The two groups will decide on the subject of the debate.

The Festival is looking for a creative digital practitioner to design innovative ways of working with participants to create digital content from the debate which will then be put online to widen and continue the discussion.

The expert will work with a small team of the participants before the debate to develop their skills and plan how they will use the equipment to capture the atmosphere and discussion. The DigiExpert will be responsible for putting the material online and advising on how it is best utilised.

The Festival hopes to have four DigiDebates over 2010, with the pilot DigiDebate taking place in March. It is hoped that the DigiExpert will be involved with all four debates.

Timescales

• 2 workshop sessions participant training (date tbc) and debate March 29, 30 or 31 (tbc)
• 1 evaluation session – April 19th (tbc)
• 1 day advising The Festival and creating ideas
• 3 days preparation, editing and uploading (for further discussion)

Budget

£800 – £1,000

Deadline for submissions

Deadline for submissions is 12pm, 8 March 2010.

More information and to apply

Please download the PDF about the DigiExpert work, or contact:

Sian Smith
Project and Administration Officer
Festival Office
Oldham Coliseum Theatre
Fairbottom Street
Oldham OL1 3SW

Email: sian@festivalofdiversity.co.uk
Phone: 0161 785 7016
Website: www.festivalofdiversity.co.uk

The website redevelopment brief document is available for download, and the deadline for responses is 5pm, Thursday 9 April 2009.

Key requirements from the brief

• Setting up a new CMS and database, ideally using open source software.
• Setting up new hosting for the site. Suppliers should note that email is currently hosted in-house by the Coliseum. As such, suppliers will be expected to work with Coliseum staff to ensure that hosting arrangements for the new site do not impact the current email hosting.
• Developing a visual design for the new site that is fresh but does not alienate the Coliseum’s core, loyal, local audience.
• Working with Coliseum staff to develop the content plan for the site.
• Work with Coliseum staff to develop a Service Level Agreement that will clearly identify areas of responsibility and other contractual arrangements.
• Suppliers must be willing to develop a friendly working relationship with an organisation that currently has limited resources to support online activities.
• Implement a simple technique in the CMS to link out to a third-party ticket booking / ordering website.
  Implement statistics / analytics for the site.
• Training Coliseum staff in how to use the new CMS.

What the Oldham Coliseum is looking for in the supplier who’ll get this work

Oldham Coliseum currently has a small but dedicated ‘digital team’ to support the development of content for the site and carry out basic administration.

However, that team currently has limited technical resources available to do the ‘screwdriver work’ such as coding new templates in the CMS, server administration, domain management, hosting management, server monitoring, and so on.

Oldham Coliseum is seeking to develop a long-term relationship with a supplier who:

• Will help with the screwdriver work.
• Suggest ideas for ways to develop the content on the site.
• Ideally be based in North West England, but this is not a deciding factor.
• Understands the constraints the theatre has working with a limited budget and a small team, and be honest about the level of support they can provide given these constraints.
• The budget the Coliseum has available for this initial piece of work is not a huge amount of money. As such, suppliers may think what is being is a too much for what is available. However, as already stated, suppliers should keep in mind that the Coliseum is looking to develop a long-term relationship.

Further information

For a discussion about this work and to find out more about Oldham Coliseum’s plans for their website, please initially contact Ella Wrendenfors by email: ellawredenfors@coliseum.org.uk.