Come and be our…

CLIMATE HOPE PRODUCER

We need your help to grow our transformative climate hope work in the North East and beyond.

We’re looking for a super-organised doer-of-things to work with us. We’re fundraising for this to develop into a long-term staff role working alongside the Director as a co-leader of Threads in the Ground.

Key Dates

First Stage Deadline: 10am Monday 29th September

First stage feedback: Sent to you at 5pm Wednesday 1st October

Scond Stage Task: sent to you on Thursday 2nd October

Second Stage Task Deadline: 9am Monday 6th October

Feedback / Invite to Interview: Tuesday 7th October

Interviews: w/c 20th October

Start date: negotiable

Contract Details

Rate / Fee: £280 per day, 28 days work (£8,000 total) 

Period: Fixed Term from October 2025 - June / July 2026 (approximately) - we are fundraising to make this a longer term role

Location: Remote home working, but based in the North East.

Days / Pattern: totally flexible. This could be a set weekly day / half-days, or spread adhoc

Main Trustee Contact: Tom Agar (Chair of Trustees)

Main Collaborator: Adam Cooper (Director)

Job Summary

We need a creative organiser to help steward our Carbon Heritage strand of work, in collaboration with the range of people and organisations we work with.

You’ll be collaborating with Adam (Threads’ Director) to help make sure that the creative programme and partnerships run well. You’ll be the “organiser” - bringing structure, broken-down deadlines and task flow, extra accountability, and problem-solving. You’ll be in regular touch with our partners and collaborators. 

There’s no barriers or gatekeeping to the creative aspects of the company or how it grows. We’re very deliberately describing this as a “creative organiser”. Yes, you’ll be pushing to keep everything on flow and on timetable, but this is very much about collaborative shaping of the programme and the company alongside Adam.

Yes, this is for you

The climate, arts, and charity spaces are overwhelmingly white, middle-class, and degree educated. We need people from all kinds of backgrounds working together to do the climate work well.

Maybe you come from a background or lived experience where you don’t see people like you doing jobs like this. If this opportunity speaks to you then please apply.

If there’s something we can adjust to make this process properly accessible and welcoming for you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with adam@threadsintheground.com 


You can learn about Threads in the Ground by having a look around our website, and / or reading our Impact Framework.

A note from our Director

Hi there, my name is Adam, I’m the Director of Threads in the Ground, and I’m very excited to be recruiting a Producer interested in joining us as an eventual long-term staff member to collaborate with me and what will become a growing team.

We are coming up to 2 years of Threads, and that short time has been wild.

From a standing start, we launched a really ambitious creative programme. Highlights include…

  • We grew a bookshop made from bookshop waste

  • We helped volunteers to deep-dive into future food system imaginings and plan meals around the ideas

  • We’ve created a multimedia sound piece exploring climate change in conversation with retired coal miners and their families

  • Lots more, from talks at big conferences to sausage making to school assemblies to sustainability consultancy and beyond

Alongside the creative output we’ve worked in schools, community centres, and festivals. We’ve been on national and regional TV a few times, and featured in the Guardian, BBC news, BBC Radio 4, and a bunch of others. We’ve partnered with and/or been commissioned by everyone from the National Trust to the Festival of Thrift.

And we’re almost ready for the next bit. But we need you for that.

I want to grow the beautiful thing that is Threads and to gradually welcome in others who can also take on ownership of it. I need someone to work with me as a close collaborator and shaper of what comes next. To compliment the stuff I’m good at, and take on more of the things I struggle with.

I live with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (and suspected ADHD). Combined with my natural personality (very creative, curious, a bit charismatic, a starter-of-things and connector of people), I can really struggle to be the consistent and reliable person that the charity needs to realise its full potential. I’m not comfortable holding multiple deadlines, project timelines / flow, and keeping the wide array of people we work with always up to speed. Sometimes I drop stuff, I miss Emails, and enthusiastically overcommit, leading to last-minute stress-sprints on project delivery.

Having you on board will help balance that all out whilst also sparking new possibilities.

This contract is a mid-term(ish) freelance role. The focus is on our Carbon Heritage programme (more on that below). But we want to grow your role with us into a permanent position as we have more fundraising successes.

Thanks for taking a look. I can’t wait to get your application and see what happens next.

Read on for the rest!



All the best,

Adam.

Things we really care about

  • Your values fit with Threads and the work we do

  • You get stuff done

  • You do the balancing act of organising and relationship building

  • You think a lot about climate change, nature, the general human crisis we live in

  • You’re ready to dedicate yourself to exploring effective climate work 

Things we don’t really care about…

  • Your CV and personal statement. They’re not a good way to get a sense of someone’s potential

  • What formal qualifications or education you have

  • Whether you’ve held similar job titles / roles before

  • What other organisations you’ve worked for

  • How good a “performer” or talker you are in an interview

  • How “green” you live: whether you use disposable coffee cups or eat red meat etc

Who are we looking for…

  • You like organising and stabilising things

  • But you’re happy being flexible and changing up the plan…(you do always have a plan)

  • You are good with detail

  • You’re probably the person that sorts out friend and family gatherings

  • You’re often the person who makes interesting ideas into a reality 

  • You like to get stuff done ahead of the deadline

  • You think before immediately saying yes. When you say yes, you always do the thing you’ve committed to

  • When you come up against barriers to getting a thing done, you work out your own solutions 

  • You’re comfortable disagreeing and being disagreed with. You like the generative back-and-forth

  • You love creative, cultural stuff. Whether it’s some crafts, books, festivals…whatever

Responsibilities

We’ve put a lot of thought into making some clear, tangible responsibilities for you to work to. But we want to emphasise that these aren’t fixed - you will work with Adam to test and rework these as you get into the role and you make progress together. But for the moment, this is our best understanding of the responsibilities:

Ancestral Reverb

www.ancestralreverb.com 

Our award-winning Sound / Multimedia project created with Durham coal communities

  • Supporting tour booking / organising / running

  • Liaising with board, partners, stakeholders to select and contact venues for the Ancestral Reverb tour

  • Maintaining contact and relationship with Ancestral Reverb tour partners - host venues, promotional partners, artists etc

  • Collaborate with Adam to plan and develop the creative presentation of the Ancestral Reverb tour - how do we want to curate each event, what we want them to feel like, are there any additional activities / resource we want to run at events

Hereditary Footprint

www.threadsintheground.com/projects/hereditaryfootprint

An incredibly ambitious immersive theatre piece with county-wide community engagement in Carbon Heritage ideas

  • Support Adam to complete a range of fundraising proposals

  • Write and maintain a project plan: key milestones for research and development of the piece, community engagement, public comms, fundraising etc

  • Schedule regular steering-group meetings

  • Check in with partners and stakeholders on project plan progress

Durham Energy Council / Manifesto

www.threadsintheground.com/projects/durham-energy-council 

A Citizens Assembly on Durham Energy - 30 members of the public, half representing Ancestors, half representing Descendents

  • Help keep good communication Adam, Alison Paterson (Blackhall Community Centre), Durham Energy Institute, and New Writing North

  • Collaborate with Adam to ensure the Energy Council sessions are well planned and resourced, and that minutes and follow-ups are properly actioned

  • Liaise with creative partners (writer in residence, New Writing North, Foundation Press) to ensure Energy Manifesto piece is on progress

General

  • Generally collaborate with Adam to build the programme and partnerships

  • Build and manage an overarching project plan for the programme: milestones etc. 

  • Organise and join meetings with partners

  • Some event management: agenda, resources, venue, invites, etc

  • Supporting fundraising: working with Adam on writing of funding and commission bids

Application Process

We don’t believe in CVs and Personal Statements as a good method for hiring. Here’s an article we like if you’re interested.

We’ve thought and worked hard to make a process that champions what you can bring, not how confidently you present yourself on a page or interview.

The application is in 3 stages - but that’s to make it easier for you and us. We’re trying to make the earlier stages as easy and light-touch as possible, so that later on only a smaller group of people are having to put in “full application” levels of time and work.

Stage One - Light(ish) Questions

First step application deadline is 10am, Monday 29th September.

We’ll be in touch with you on Wednesday 1st October, to let you know if we want to invite you to the next step or not.

Whether you’re successful or not you’ll hear from us on that day at 17:00. We’ll be sending you the crib-sheet we used for scoring, and your application scores.

Stage Two - Tasks

There will then be a second round task designed to take about an hour of your time. This will come out to you on Thursday 2nd October, and you’ll have till 9am Monday 6th October to finish it - no extra points for doing it early.

We’ll then be in touch on Tuesday 7th October to give feedback, and invite you to interview. (Sorry for the slow turnaround, we have a festival in between).

Stage Three - Interviews

Interviews will be in-person in Newcastle upon Tyne, on the Week of 20th October.

You’ll have the opportunity for an informal Zoom meeting hello with our Director, Adam, so that you have a chance to meet an panellist before the day.

Interviews will be 90 minutes long - including a 15 minute tea / comfort break half-way.

When we invite you to a 90 minute interview, we’ll include a set of questions and / or topics we want to talk through.

You’ll be told who will be in the interview with you, you’ll get a short video of each interviewer saying hello.

We’ll also ask you to send us what questions you have for the interviewees. The first 30 minutes of the interview will be your time to lead with questions.

Who will be assessing your application?

Your application will be assessed through the stages by Adam Cooper, Bhavisha Kukadia-Moran, and Anna Disley. You can read about each of us on the Threads team page here.